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A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 

EXPOSITION 

OF THE 

ATONEMENT 

BY 

JOSEPH ADAMS, 
38 McVicker's Theatre Building, 
CHICAGO, ILL. /& 

or 

568 SEVENTEENTH ST., OAKLAND, CAL. 




Price, Single Copies, 50 Cents. 



j-i 



* 






OF C 



COPYRIGHTED 

By JOSEPH ADAMS, 

1889. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



PREFACE. 



In John's Epistle, 4th chapter and first verse we find 
it written, " Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the 
spirits, whether they are of God, because many false 
prophets are gone out into the world." This is just what 
we say to every reader of this little book. It greets you 
with a claim of Truth. Try it. Put it to the test. Should 
you ask, "By what means can it be tested?" we reply, If 
you test it by what is called the teachings of orthodox 
theology, you will conclude that it is not fit to live, but if 
you will try it by the only proper method of trial, viz., 
Does its teachings harmonize with the voice of Truth 
within you? Then Ave are presumptious enough to think 
that you will hail it with as much pleasure as you would 
a companion with a lantern on a dark night, if you had a 
long and dangerous road to travel. 

The following nine lectures were first delivered to 
the congregation worshipping every Sunday morning in 
Hooley's theatre, Chicago, then published monthly in 
The Chicago Christian Scie?ttist, and now in this form 
at the earnest solicitation of many whose difficulties in 
relation to the atonement (as formerly interpreted by the 
theological schools of to-day) have been removed, and 
their lives made constantly happy in the consciousness of 
their being the spiritual and not material children of God. 

To you, beloved reader, this little messenger comes, 
with the earnest desire of the author, that in its perusal, 
you may find the Christ, who is Life, Truth and Love, 
and finding him, be freed from sin, sickness and death. 

JOSEPH ADAMS, 
McVicker's Theatre Building, Chicago. 



THE HTONEMENT, 



Prove all things \ hold fast to that which is good (Truth). — Paul* 



FIRST LECTURE. 

In giving you our thoughts on the sublime subject of 
Atonement, we are not presumptuous enough to think that 
what we may say on that subject is all the Truth and nothing 
but the Truth. It can hardly be expected of one who has 
been preaching for thirty years (and conscientiously too) 
the old orthodox view of the Atonement, that he should 
be able to learn, and accurately express with only three 
years' of study, and proof, the new tongue, which the 
spiritual interpretation of Scriptures requires. 

In making this statement, however, do not under- 
stand us as asking you to overlook, or excuse us for any 
misrepresentation of the Truth. If we should declare error, 
as it is quite possible with our limited understanding we may, 
and any of our readers should detect the same, we beg of 
you not to let it alone, or cover it over, for fear of wound- 
ing our feelings, but bring it to the light, uncover it, and 
you will find us with a grateful heart for your service, and 
readiness to put the error away forever. We desire, far 
above gold or silver, or the honor whieh cometh from 
men, the Truth and nothing but the Truth, so if our ex- 
position of the Atonement, in any part, is manifestly con- 
trary to the Truth, and you know it, please let us know it, 
and our debt of gratitude we will own and pay to the best 
of our abilitv. 



6 A CHRISTIAN' SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

The doctrine of the Atonement is and has been for 
centuries considered the fundamental doctrine of Christi- 
anity. All the knowledge we have of it is supposed to be 
derived from the Bible. The vicarious nature of the Atone- 
ment distinguishes Christianity from Deism, Mohamedan- 
ism, Budhism, Paganism, in fact all the other religions of the 
world, and by it the Christian system is isolated from all 
others. Inasmuch as it constitutes the very pith and 
ground work of Christianity, it should never be tampered 
with, set aside, or its value depreciated without good and 
sufficient reasons. 

Christian Science does not propose to discard it or 
depreciate its value. We believe, as Scientists, most cor- 
dially in the doctrine of the Atonement, but we do not 
believe in the interpretations which the creeds of so-called 
orthodoxy put upon it, and in the discussion of this im- 
portant doctrine, all we propose is, simply to explain it 
reasonably, scientifically, and spiritually, and show its per- 
fect harmony with the great verities of man's being, for 
notwithstanding all that has been said about our being 
under obligation to accept it because it is revealed to us in 
the Bible, we must affirm with profound respect for all 
who differ with us in opinion, that we can not accept as 
Truth that which is manifestly unreasonable. 

The argument " that we admit, or believe in the truth 
of many things, as having an existence in the natural world 
which we do not understand," can have no weight, as for 
example, we believe in the growth, beauty, and fragrance 
of the rose, but we do not understand how it grows, who 
paints with such exquisite taste its shades of color, or how 
it is invested with such delicious perfume. It is quite true, 
with our present limited knowledge we can not tell just 
how this thing is done, but in its being done there is noth* 



OF THE A TOXEMENT. 7 

ing to make it unreasonable. If you should tell us, how- 
ever, that the real rose, of which that material rose is but 
a faint symbol, had its origin in a Being who is so inflexi- 
bly just that He could not smile upon, and receive to His 
bosom an erring child of His, until an elder brother, who 
had never erred, had suffered indescribable miseries to pur- 
chase the Father's forfeited favor, then we should be 
obliged to say, that such a representation of the nature of 
Him to whom we spontaneously look as " Our Father," 
is altogether unreasonable and we can not accept it. That 
the doctrine of the Atonement, when spiritually under- 
stood, is in harmony with the great verities of man's being, 
we have no doubt. 

The chief verity, or fact of that being is, that Man, 
created in the image and likeness of God, never fell ; that 
he never was at variance with his Creator and never can 
be, for the simple reason that he has no separate or inde- 
pendent existence, seeing that he lives, moves, and has .the 
only being he possesses in God. If man is an image and 
likeness of God, as the Scriptures so emphatically affirm, 
man can never be anything else. To illustrate my mean- 
ing, suppose that you hold before a mirror a watch, as 
perfect as it can be made, the reflection of that watch in 
the mirror will correspond exactly to the perfection of the 
watch, and just so long as the watch remains intact the 
reflection will remain so. The only way you can change 
the reflection is to change the watch. You can not even 
mar the reflection while the object remains perfect. Just so 
we make the following self-evident affirmation in Science. 

Seeing that God is absolutely perfect and incapable of 
change, so must His image and likeness (Man) be, for if 
he is not, then God has no manifestation of Himself, and 
Man is left without the means of knowing what God is. 



<? A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

The admission that Man was once an image and likeness 
of God, but that he lost it by disobedience, will not hold 
in logical argument, for the moment that you assume that 
Man had the power to disobey God, that moment you 
assume that Man never was the image and likeness of God, 
for you cannot conceive of God's likeness possessing a 
capacity to antagonize himself. This being the case, Man 
— using the term in its generic sense as used in Gen. i., 26, 
and comprehending all mankind, and there is no other 
man that is the likeness and image of God — this man never 
fell, never got out of harmony with his Maker or the 
Being of whom he is a likeness, and hence the only real 
man there is, needs no atonement (in the sense that word 
has been interpreted by Theology) to bring him back to, 
and make him at one again with God, for the only being 
he ever had is in God, and could not by any possibility fall 
out of God, because God is everywhere present. 

Another great verity of man's being is, that he is 
already immortal, or he can not be the image and likeness 
of God. If God be immortal, then that which reflects 
Him must be, and hence no atonement is needed to restore 
a lost immortality. How can man's immortality be lost 
when there is no place in which to lose it except in God, 
and as man's only being is in God, he is immortal just as 
long as God is. 

So much by way of preface. Now let us proceed to 
give you our idea of the Atonement, and first we shall give 
you the literal meaning of the word Atonement. It is 
synonymous with the clearest idea we have of agreement, 
concord, peace, reconciliation, covering, putting away, 
hiding from view. The verb carries the thought, reconcil- 
ing parties who have been at variance, by some considera- 
tion, apology, or present made by one of the parties, or 



OF THE A TENEMENT: 9 

some other in their behalf, by which the variance, unpleas- 
antness or strife is broken down, the chasm bridged, and 
the persons once more made one. 

Atonement in this sense is being made every day. 
The principle of atonement is well illustrated by the con- 
duct of Jacob toward his brother Esau. According to the 
Bible record Jacob was in disposition a supplanter, or, as we 
should say now, a schemer, one who is always trying to 
get ahead of somebody else and secure the best of a bargain. 
Aided by his mother, who, unfortunately for Jacob, re- 
garded him as her pet, (all pets have in the end a hard 
time of it) he stole by a ruse the birthright of his brother, 
who on finding it out vowed vengeance, and Jacob, to save 
his life, was obliged to fly from his home and country. 
He was away for a number of years, during which time 
he married, had a family, and acquired considerable prop- 
erty. Getting, as we should say, homesick, he made up 
his mind to go back to the old country, and started with a 
great company and an abundance of live stock. As he 
neared his native land he sent ahead some servants to ascer- 
tain the mind of his brother, for the sense of wrong he had 
done Esau was still alive, — " the ghost would not go 
down." So it is to-day ; wrong must be righted before 
the consciousness of rest is realized. 

Jacob's messenger returned with the tidings that Esau 
was coming to meet him with four hundred armed men. 
Then his fears increased, and he immediately set to work 
to turn aside, if possible, the just punishment that was due 
to him. So he went to work and prepared a handsome 
present for his brother, to atone for the wrong he had 
done him and to propitiate his wrath. " Two hundred 
she-goats and twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes and 
twenty rams, thirty milch camels with their colts, forty 



io A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

kine and ten bulls, twenty she-asses and ten foals. And 
he delivered them into the hands of. his servants, every 
drove by themselves, and he commanded the foremost, 
saying: "When Esau, my brother, meeteth thee, and asketh 
thee, saying, Whose art thou? and whither goest thou? 
and whose are these before thee? Then thou shalt say, 
they be thy servant Jacob's; it is a present sent unto my 
lord Esau ; and behold, he also is behind us.' And so com- 
manded he the second and the third, and all that followed 
the droves, saying, in this manner shall ye speak unto 
Esau when ye find him, and say ye, moreover, thy servant 
Jacob is behind us, for he said, I will appease him with the 
present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his 
face ; peradventure he will accept me." 

This same idea has been retained in theology. God is 
represented as having been made very angry at man's sin, 
and determined to punish him, just as Esau his brother 
Jacob, and as man was not able to appease God's wrath as 
Jacob did his brother, by giving him a very handsome pres- 
ent, or doing something else by which he could allay the 
anger of God, Jesus Christ is represented as coming for- 
ward, and himself bearing the punishment so justly due to 
man ; hence theology calls the sacrifice of Jesus Christ 
" vicarious," that is, substituting one person for another* 
And further, God, according to the old system of theology, 
is represented as saying in substance to the sinner, u If 
you will repent of your sins and trust implicitly in what 
my son Jesus Christ has done for you, I will remit the 
punishment due to your transgressions, receive you into 
my favor again, and treat you just as if you had never 
sinned. It is not enough that you should repent of your 
sins, for my offended justice must be satisfied by an atone- 
ment, which has been made for you by the incarnation, 



OF THE ATOXEMEXT. it 

sufferings, and death upon the cross of My beloved Son, 
Jesus Christ. If you trust altogether to that and not to 
anything you can do, I will receive you graciously and 
love you freely, and if you continue in the exercise of 
that trust until you die, then I will take you to my beauti- 
ful home in heaven, but if you do not, I will withdraw my 
favor from you in this life, and when you die, I will put you 
in hell, and there I will torment you in fire and brimstone 
for ever and ever; for there will be no let up to my anger 
in that place into which the impenitent wicked are put on 
the great day of judgment, because they refuse to trust in 
the vicarious work of my Son Jesus." 

Is it any wonder that thoughtful, intelligent men 
and women should say: "If that is a correct interpre- 
tation of the God of the Bible, and the author of what is 
called Religion, I don't believe in Him, neither do I want 
His religion." Nor I, beloved. My whole being revolts 
at the thought of such a God, and to-day the problem 
which I find myself unable to solve is, how was it possible 
that for thirty years, while in what is called the orthodox 
ministry, I should have been in. such ignorance, as to be- 
lieve in, and preach with such persistency that horrible 
doctrine? I don't know. I can't account for it, only as I 
accepted what I had been taught without thinking of ever 
asking the question, "Are these things so?" 

Beloved reader, whatever you do, don't fall into my 
folly. Challenge everything, no matter from whom it 
comes, and don't give up your right of inquiry, even if the 
claim or doctrine taught is white with the ages of antiqui- 
tv. Unless it is reasonable, and commends itself to your 
spiritual understanding as verity and truth, tell it to pass* 
on, for you have no use for anything which is not in 



12 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

harmony with your capacity for perceiving spiritual truth 
and understanding God. 

From my eyes the scales have fallen, the night of 
beliefs is fast passing away, the day of light, Truth and 
understanding dawns upon me ; and as I stand before you 
this day, thrilled with the consciousness of freedom, I re- 
joice to affirm, because I no longer believe, but know that 
the old belief is a libel on the character of " Our Father." 
His name and nature is Love. He never gets angry and 
furious because you don't do just as he tells you. Perhaps 
you will say to me, " Does not the Bible say that God is 
angry with the wicked every day?" Yes, there is such a 
passage, but that cannot be God's declared opinion of Him- 
self, but man's opinion of God. Mortal man knows that 
if he can not have his way of things, that he gets cross, or 
as we commonly say, " mad," and he thinks that God is 
just like him; but when the voice of God or Truth is 
heard, as it is through Asaph in the fiftieth Psalm, such an 
opinion or belief of God is severely rebuked; " Thou 
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself ; 
but I will reprove thee and set them (thine errors) in 
order before thine eyes." 

The same spirit of Truth, speaking through Isaiah in 
Chap. 55, says, " For my thoughts are not your thoughts, 
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as 
the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways 
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your 
thoughts." Why, in the presence of such statements of 
self-evident Truth, will mortal man persist in making God 
/like unto himself ? God is Principle, not person, limited, 
located or outlined. He is Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, 
Spirit, Intelligence. How can you outline or invest with 
personality such qualities of Deity? If God is Principle, 



OF THE ATONEMENT. is 

outlining everything in the realm of reality, but never out- 
lined Himself, how is it possible for Principle to get angry, 
out of temper, or vindictive? 

Would it be possible for you to conceive of the Prin- 
ciple of harmony in music getting angry, and punishing 
with great severity a scholar, who through ignorance pro- 
duced discordant notes? Never! Or to make the error of 
such a supposition more apparent, could you imagine the 
principle of harmony as investing the learner of music 
with a capacity to make mistakes, yea, authorizing another, 
and endowing that other with a capacity to induce the 
scholar to produce discordant notes, as the serpent did our 
Mother Eve (so said), and then if the scholar did make a 
mistake, severely punish him for doing it, unless some 
atonement is made to appease the supposed anger of the 
Principle, Harmony. 

I can imagine that you are ready to exclaim with in- 
dignation, " The thing is utterly preposterous, and can have 
no foundation in fact or Truth. And yet, beloved, this is 
the very thing which orthodox Theology (so-called) predi- 
cates of " Our Father who art in heaven." We know, some 
of you will be disposed to say, " You are mistaken, sir; 
such is not the teaching of what is called orthodox The- 
ology." We have not the least desire to overdraw, highly 
color, or misrepresent, for if we do we shall only be send- 
ing forth a boomerang, which will certainly return on 
ourselves and do us more harm than it can possibly do 
anyone else, so in our next we shall furnish you w4th the 
evidence upon which we base our assertions, so that each 
one may judge as to whether our statements are true or 
false. 



j 4 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 



SECOND LECTURE. 

In this lecture we are to show you, first; What the 
teaching of so-called orthodoxy is, in relation to the doctrine 
of the Atonement, and thus prove to you, that we have not 
misrepresented or too highly colored, in order that we may 
produce an effect, by stirring the emotions and leaving the 
judgment unenlightened. 

If you refer to Webster's theological definition of the 
Atonement, you will find it reads as follows: " The 
expiation of sin, made by the obedience and personal suf- 
ferings of Christ." To expiate, he says, " is to extinguish 
the guilt of, by sufferance of penalty or some equivalent, 
to make satisfaction or reparation for, to atone." Theology 
says this expiation was made for the human race by Jesus 
Christ. In Binney's Theological Compend, which is a 
condensed expression of the theological views of the Con- 
gregationalists, on page 69, he says: " By the Atonement 
is meant the satisfaction offered to divine justice by Jesus 
Christ, who underwent by His suffering and death the 
penalty due to our sins. The Hebrew word signifies cov- 
ering, and intimates that our offenses are, by a proper 
atonement, covered from the avenging justice of God." 

Dr. Hodge, in his commentary on the Westminster 
Confession of Faith, which expresses the theological views 
taught at Princeton and accepted by the Presbyterian 
Churches, says on page 205, section 5: " The Lord Jesus, 
by His perfect obedience and sacrifice of Himself, which 
He, through the Eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, 
hath fully satisfied the justice of His Father, and pur- 
chased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inherit- 
ance in the Kingdom of Heaven for all those whom the 



OF THE ATONEMENT, 15 

Father hath given unto Him," — and those whom He has 
not given to him we are at liberty to infer are left out in 
the eternal cold? No! they are to be put in the eternal fire. 
Section 6: "Although the work of redemption 
was not actually wrought by Christ till after His incarna- 
tion, yet the virtue, efficacy, and benefits thereof were 
communicated unto the elect in all ages successively from 
the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, 
types, and sacrifices wherein He was revealed, and signi- 
fied to be the seed of the woman which should bruise the 
serpent's head, and the lamb slain from the beginning of 
the world, being yesterday and to-day the same and for- 
ever. Christ by His obedince and death did fully dis- 
charge the debt of all those that are thus justified, and 
did make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to His 
Father's justice in their behalf." 

The Doctor, in commenting on these sections, says: 
" This truth is taught in the Confessions of all the 
Churches, Lutheran and Reformed. The Heidelberg 
Catechism, one of the most generally adopted of all the 
Reformed Confessions, says, question 60: i God without 
any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and 
imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and 
holiness of Christ, . . . As if /had fully accomplished 
all that obedience which Christ hath accomplished for 
me.' r He says further: " This is the doctrine of the 
whole Christian Church. The thirty-nine articles of the 
Church of England say, article 31: 'The offering of 
Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation, 
and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both 
original and actual.' " 

The Catechism of the Council of Trent, ii., 5-63: 
" Whatever is due by us to God on account of our sins has 



16 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

been paid abundantly, although He should deal with us 

according to the strictest rigor of His justice. . . , 

For it we are indebted to Christ alone, who, having paid 

the price of our sins on the Cross, most fully satisfied 

God." 

In the Catechism of the Weselyan Methodists, No. 2, 
page 13, the following question is asked and the answer 
given : 

" How did the death of Christ satisfy the Divine 
justice?" 

" The death of Christ satisfied Divine justice in that 
our sins deserved death; but Christ being both God and 
man, and perfectly righteous, there was an infinite value 
and merit in His death, — which being undergone for our 
sakes and in our stead, the Almighty God exercises His 
mercy in the forgiveness of sins, consistently with His 
justice and holiness." 

One other quotation and then we shall have given you 
the views of all the Evangelical Churches in relation to 
the Atonement, and that is from the " Discipline of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church," Page 24, Article 24: " The 
offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, 
propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole 
world, both original and actual ; and there is none other 
satisfaction for sin but that alone." 

From these quotations, which you can all verify if so 
inclined, you will see that the universal church, that is, all 
the Evangelical Churches, do regard the sufferings and 
death of Jesus Christ, as a price paid to our loving Father 
to appease His anger, satisfy the demands of His justice, 
and induce Him to be merciful to the penitent sinner, be- 
cause of what Jesus Christ had done. Indeed, God is held 
as under obligation to remit the penalty of sin due to a vio- 



OF THE A TONEMENT. i 7 

lator of law, because Jesus Christ is represented as satisfy- 
ing the demands of justice by His own obedience and death 
in the stead of the sinner. The only difference of belief 
in any of the churches in relation to the Atonement is, that 
one part believe that it is only the elect who will derive 
any permanent benefit from the vicarious work of Christ, 
and that all others will certainly perish, or be punished 
eternally for their sins. 

Of course you will not expect me to explain to your 
satisfaction how a just and loving Father and Mother God 
can receive an ample and sufficient satisfaction and atone- 
ment for the offenses of all His children and then confer 
the benefit of that atonement only upon a 'part of His 
family, when they are all entitled to it. Such conduct is 
inexplainable by me. Perhaps Brothers Calvin and Hodge 
can harmonize it with a God who is said to be, and must 
be, to command the love and obedience of His children, 
u no respect or of persons ," we cannot. 

We shall now proceed to consider the various Scrip- 
tural and Theological terms employed to express the differ- 
ent phases of the Atonement. 

(1.) The word itself, Atonement. This word is only 
to be found once in the New Testament, and that in the 
old version, Romans v., 11 ; " And not only so, but we 
also glory in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by 
whom we have now received the atonement." In the 
new version it is rendered reconciliation, which, according 
to the original, means " restoration to favor." In our last 
lecture we showed you that the word atonement was a 
name given to those means by which two or more parties 
who had been at variance were made at-one-ment again, 
which implies that at one time they had been one, but 
an alienation for some real or imagined cause had taken 



j 8 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

place, but now removed by what is called the Atonement. 

The whole doctrine of the atonement proceeds upon 
the basis that the material man is the real man, of 
God's creation, and originally created perfect in Adam, who 
is supposed to be the fir/st man, and that from him and 
his equally perfect wife, Eve, the whole of humanity 
sprung. This perfect pair fell from their first estate, by 
which fall they became incapable of transmitting to their 
posterity a nature like that which they received from God. 
This inherent bias, or natural inclination to evil, or as the- 
ology puts it, " They (that is, Adam and Eve,) being the 
root of all mankind, the guilt of their sin was imputed, and 
the same death in sin and coirupted nature conveyed to all 
their posterity, descending from them by ordinary genera- 
tion. From this original corruption, whereby we are 
utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good 
and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual trans- 
gressions." 

This moral and physical corruption has gone on de- 
veloping until it has reached the state described by Paul in 
Rom. i., 29: "Filled with all injustice, fornication, 
maliciousness, covetousness, wickedness; full of envy, 
murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, back- 
biters; haters of God, proud, violent; boasters, inventors of 
evil things; disobedient to parents, without understanding, 
covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, 
unmerciful ; who knowing the righteous judgment of God, 
that they who practice such things are worthy of death, 
not only do the same, but have pleasure in those that prac- 
tice them." 

Out of this mass of moral and physical corruption, 
theology represents God as engaged in manufacturing a 
perfect man, or rather restoring this man which Paul 



OF THE A TONEMENN. ig 

describes, to his original state of holiness and oneness with 
God by means of the Atonement. Jesus says that such a 
thing can not be done. Hear Him: "Do men gather 
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?" " A corrupt tree 
cci)i not bring forth good fruit." " Out of the heart pro- 
ceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, 
thefts, false witness, railings." If the essential elements of 
this natural man are bad, and Paul confirms the idea of his 
Master in Rom. viii., 7: "Because the carnal mind is 
enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, 
neither indeed can be." You can no more change its 
nature than you can convert lead into gold. You may 
subject the lead to any fiery or chemical process that it is 
possible to think of, but it remains lead still. So you may 
preach to the carnal mind the laws of Sinai and show it 
the flames of the bottomless pit, or you may take it to 
Calvary and by all the manifestations of love which 
reached its climax there; you may entreat it, even with 
tears, and you can not change by any such means the 
nature of the carnal mind. 

Then what are you to do with it? Utterly consume 
it bv the perception, understanding, realization, and decla- 
ration of the truth, that it is a lie, a nothing claiming to be 
something, a mere belief without a fact or truth to sustain 
it. The carnal mind is not changed, but destroyed, its 
claims are annihilated by Christ the Truth. 

Against this position, which we take in science, is 
urged the thought with a kind of holy horror, " Why you 
limit the power of God when you say that God can not 
convert a sinner into a saint!" It all depends on what you 
mean by conversion. If you mean that God can manu- 
facture the truth out of a lie, purity out of impurity, light 
out of darkness, and life out of death, then science declares 



20 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

that God can not do it any more than you can manufacture 
gold out of iron. The quality of a thing is its inherent 
property or nature, that which it is in and of itself; if that 
is bad you cannot make it good. Sin is sin, and the only 
thing that you can do with it, is not to change it, but utter- 
ly destroy it. This is the specific work of Christ, not to 
transform, but destroy the works of the devil, and He, the 
Truth, will never cease its work until the last belief of 
mortal man goes out in eternal oblivion. 

Instead of our limiting the power of God by this 
reasonable and scientific position, it is the objector that 
limits God. Mrs. Eddy, in an article in The Christian 
Science ^Journal for March, 1887, makes this very clear. 
"Error says that to know all things God must know evil, 
and it dishonors Him to say He is ignorant of evil. But 
God said of this fruit of the tree of good and evil, c in the 
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' If God 
is Infinite and good, He knows nothing but good ; if He 
did He would not be Infinite. Infinite Mind knows noth- 
ing beyond Himself or Herself, the noumena and its phe- 
nomena. It was not against evil, but against knowing evil 
that God forewarned. He dwelleth in light, and in the 
light He sees light and cannot see darkness. The opposite 
conclusion, that darkness dwelleth in light, has neither pre- 
cedent nor foundation in nature, logic, or the character of 
Christ. 

" Error or the senses say, that to save from sin God 
must know sin. Truth replies, c God is too pure to behold 
iniquity;'" and virtue of His ignorance of that which by 
not, He knoweth that which is, and abideth in Himself the 
only life, truth, and love, and is reflected by a universe in 
His own image and likeness. Error or the senses say, dis- 
ease is real, and God must know it to heal it. Truth 



OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 21 

replies, because disease seems real, and is error, truth 
destroys this seeming and thus heals it. God cannot know 
unreality. Immortal mind is real, mortal mind is unreal. 
for mind is immortal; thought is a quality of mind, then if 
God thought of the unreal, the unreal would be a quality 
of His mind, and haying this quality He could not destroy 
the illusion of so-called mortal mind and heal the sick by 
disabusing mortal mind of the unreality of false knowledge 
which is the sickness. 

" Error, or the senses say. you must know sorrow to 
console it, c like as a father pitieth his children.' Truth 
replies, the modes of Diyine pity are the very antipodes of 
the human modes of pity. The Diyine sympathy 
is with truth, not with error; and for it to be otherwise 
would perpetuate error. His modes of harmony virtually 
deny the existence of error ; to sympathize with error would 
be to admit the reality of error and thus dethrone truth as 
Infinite and all. Suffering and sorrow are the effects of 
sin and ignorance, and the sympathy of our God is made 
manifest in the destruction of ignorance and sin. The 
Father's loye is truth, not error; and the Father is seen in 
this loye that c destroyeth our iniquities and healeth our 
diseases;' human pity cannot do this. 

" Error says, God must know death to destroy it. 
Truth replies, God is the eyer-conscious Life, and to be 
eyer-conscious of Life is to be neyer conscious of death. 
He is all; then it is impossible for Him to know something 
beside Him ; and if it were possible, it would make Him 
less instead of more, for evil is nothingness. Because the 
senses say that to know evil is an attainment it does not 
make it so. This was the original lie of the Serpent, and 
the Serpent still says the Lord knows evil, and there is an 
adyantage in knowing it — that man knows evil, and it 



22 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

makes him who knows it as God's, since God knoweth it.' 
" This is the old new story, and subtlety of sin lifting 
its voice higher because God is speaking louder than ever 
against evil, and Truth is saying, that for God to be like 
a sinner in one single capacity would make Him no longer 
God. With Him, to know, is to be; the foreknowledge, 
foreordination and election of God are one. God is Mind, 
and if this Mind knows evil, all is not good in God, and 
our Model is gone, and man need not seek to escape what 
is in Eternal Mind, for it must and will be reflected by 
man. Even the Divine Mind with these opposite elements 
• would be a kingdom divided against itself, that is, brought 
to desolation; for evil is a self -destroying and self- 
destroyed lie, it has no fact that can be known. 

" Evil is egotistic, but not ego-istic, and boasteth itself 
for a time and then passeth away when the day breaketh 
and the shadows flee: so Father, let 4 the light that shineth 
in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not,' dispel 
this illusion of the senses, open the eyes of the blind and 
cause the deaf to hear. 
4 Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the 

throne, 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim 

unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above 
His own.' " 
No one can study the foregoing quotation who is 
open to the force of Truth and Reason without being led 
to the conclusion that the teachings of orthodoxy (as it is 
called) upon the subject of the Atonement denies the 
Infinity and Omnipotence of God, because it invests evil 
or sin with a reality, which cannot be true while God or 
good is the only reality. 



OF THE ATONEMENT. 23 



THIRD LECTURE. 

In this lecture we shall first consider the significance 
of the word " reconciliation" as applied to the atonement. 

The original word, " Kattalage," (Greek) from the 
verb " Kattalatto," means to change, exchange, to part 
with something that has been held, to restore, or bring 
back again. 

This work of change, or exchange, is wrought by 
Christ the Truth. Please notice who it is that is to under- 
go the change. The old teaching has been that God is to 
be reconciled to man; that His purpose toward man must 
undergo a change ; hence the atonement has always been 
represented as a work of Jesus Christ, to change the pur- 
pose of God toward man. Just as if man was already 
willing to be reconciled to God, but that God was not will- 
ing, until the incarnation, sufferings and death of Jesus 
broke down his antagonism to man and made it possible,, 
bv the substituted punishment of his son for the sinner, to 
relax the claims of justice. 

This is a very great mistake, and freighted with the 
most pernicious consequences to human kind. God's dis- 
position or purpose toward man can never be changed. 
He says: "I am the Lord, I change not." He is the 
same yesterday, to-day and forever. There is no ill will 
or grudge in God against man. " God is love," and never 
anything else. Infinite love, filling immensity, manifested 
everywhere, can have no knowledge of what is called 
mortal man's sin, and therefore can never show a disposi- 
tion or purpose to punish sin, in the sense that punishment 
is commonly explained. It is this mortal man, the " per- 
sonna" or mask of the real man which sets up its illusive 



24 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

claim, and says: " I am the real man. I shall do just what 
I like, God shall not control me, for I am a God, and will 
not submit to the control of another." It is this claim of 
the carnal mind which is at enmity with God. This mist 
which arises from the beliefs of materiality, that has to be 
cleared away by the bright shining of the Truth, so that 
the real man may be seen, known, and recognized as one 
with God ; spiritual and not material. 

In " Science and Health," page 507, we have such a 
clear, terse, and truthful exposition of this point we desire 
to make clear, that we offer no apology for the quotation : 

" The atonement of Christ reconciles man to God, not 
God to man, for the Christ-principle is God, and how can 
the Christ-principle propitiate itself? How can the 
Christ-heart reach higher than itself, when no fountain 
can rise higher than its source? Jesus can conciliate no 
nature above His own, because He is part of the Eternal 
Life. It was therefore His purpose to atone, or reconcile 
man to God, not God to man. Love and truth are not at 
war with God's idea, and man is this idea. Man can not 
exceed God in love and so atone for himself. Even Jesus 
could not reconcile truth to error, for they are irreconcila- 
ble. Jesus reconciled God to man, only by giving man a 
true sense of this divine principle in His own life and 
teachings, which would redeem man from under the law 
of matter, by this explanation of the law of Spirit." The 
antagonism of the carnal man to God proceeds from his 
holding a wrong thought. He thinks God is his enemy, 
because He says " Thou shalt have no other Gods before 
Me," no will but Mine. "No Life, Truth, Love, Substance, 
or Intelligence, but that which is spiritual." This restric- 
tion the natural man believes is an interference with his 
free agency, an impediment to his advancement in knowl- 



OF THE A TOXEMENT. 23 

edge and consequent happiness. It is a continuation of 
the first recorded lie, which invested matter (the tree ) 
with an intelligence and capacity to furnish man with that 
which God had failed to give him, and without which he 
would not be supremely happy. 

Let us turn to the third chapter of Genesis and see if 
this is not so : " And the Serpent said unto the woman, 
ye shall not surely die ; for God doth know that in the day 
ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye 
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Now here it 
will be seen that the Serpent invests that tree in the midst 
of the garden, with Life, Substance, and Intelligence ; for 
the serpent assures the woman that by eating the fruit her 
eyes w^ould be opened. Then did God create a blind 
woman, with no capacity for spiritual perception? Such 
is the assumption of the serpent. This is equivalent to an 
affirmation that God or Spirit either would not, or could 
not give to the woman what it was in the power of mat- 
ter to give, for the serpent declares that the eating of the 
fruit of that tree would result in the opening of her eyes, 
or power to know, which power would exalt her to an 
equality w r ith God, who is said to know evil as well as good. 
A more consummate lie was never conceived, told, and be- 
lieved than that. That lie, or negation of the truth, is the 
root thought of the natural man. Yea, it is the natural or 
carnal man. Is the carnal man anything more than a visi- 
ble expression of that lie, which all the time claims to be 
the Truth, and declares that Life, Substance, and Intelli- 
gence is in matter? 

Just as long as the carnal man holds that thought of 
error, he turns away from God, fights God, keeps him out 
of his thought, walks in darkness, sin, sickness, and death, 
which death, according to the teachings of the Scriptures, 



26 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

is ignorance of God. To reconcile man to God is to kill 
out that thought of error, for while the natural man holds 
such a thought, he will be in darkness, sin, and death. To 
utterly destroy that thought was the atoning work of 
Jesus. His life, teachings, demonstrations, and ressurrec- 
tion from -what was called death, uncovered % \h&. lie of the 
old serpent, tore off its mask, laid bare its nothingness, and 
showed to humanity then, and for all time to come, that 
Life was not in matter, that it did not possess the power it 
claimed, that it had no Intelligence to frame, cause, or exe- 
cute a single thing ; that it was simply an illusion, a belief 
of mortal mind without an ego or principle to sustain it. 
When Jesus walked the angry sea, touched and cleansed the 
leper, fed the five thousand men beside women and chil- 
dren with five loaves and two small fishes, He proved that 
matter was only a belief, and as for death being a reality 
and something which we have to live in dread of, he 
showed at the grave of Lazarus that it also was a belief of 
mortal mind ; and when what is called death, seemed to 
say, " Lazarus is my victim, I have control here; this is a 
vast domain of mine into which no Life can enter, here 
I reign as king, and in due time I will bring nnder my 
dominion all of human kind, not one shall escape." 

Such was the claim of death; but where was the 
claimant when Jesus uttered the words, " Lazarus come 
forth!" He that was dead came forth, and thus the 
boasted power of the reality of death was proved to be a 
myth. The fear of that power, called death, has spoiled 
what might have been a delicious dream, and kept the 
world in bondage; but the darkness is disappearing; the 
bands are breaking, the stones are being roiled away, and 
even sepulchres are becoming luminous with light. No 
one before the blessed Jesus ever showed that death was 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 2? 

simply a belief of mortal mind, an illusion, a pretense, an 
unreality, a Baal, a lie and nothing more. Strong as is the 
proof of death's unreality, by the resurrection of Lazarus, 
that proof would soon have lost its power but for the 
resurrection of Jesus himself. That was the climax of all; 
but for that the Apostle Peter would never have ex- 
claimed in such exultant language, " Blessed be the God 
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to 
His abundant mercy, hath regenerated us to a living hope, 
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an 
inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadethnot 
away, reserved in heaven for you." As long as the resur- 
rection of Jesus remains an eternal fact, that long the un- 
reality of death is proved. 

" Break off your tears, ye saints and tell 

How high your great Deliverer reigns; 
Sing how He spoiled the hosts of hell, 

And led the monster death in chains. 
Say, c Live forever wondrous King, 

Born to redeem and strong to save/ 
Then ask the monster, « Where's thy sting?' 

And * Where's thy victory boasting grave?'" 

As Christian Scientists we indorse the language of 
II. of Cor., v., 18 and 19: "And all things are from God, 
who hath reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christy 
and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation — name- 
ly, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, 
not imputing their trespasses to them, and hath committed 
to us the word of reconciliation." 



28 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 



FOURTH LECTURE. 

Propitiation is another word frequently employed in 
theology to express the nature of the atonement. The 
passages of scriptures often quoted are Rom. iii., 25 and 
26: " Whom God hath set forth a propitiation, through 
faith in His blood, for a demonstration of His righteous- 
ness by the remission of past sins, through the forbearance 
of God, for a demonstration, I say, of His righteousness in 
this present time, that He might be just, and the justifier 
of him that believeth in Jesus." Also in the first of John, 
2 and 3: " And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not 
for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world." On 
the basis of this scripture, theology has interpreted this 
word, frofitiation / as an act of Christ, which includes His 
incarnation, life, sufferings and death, as that, by which He 
appeases the wrath of God, and satisfies trie rigorous de- 
mands of divine justice. We admit that the real meaning 
of the word is to appease, soothe, conciliate, quiet down, 
and hence we cannot see how such a meaning can be ap- 
plied to God, as He can never be excited or disturbed. 

We conceive of God as absolute goodness, infinite love 
and unlimited power, and we cannot think of the harmony of 
His being ever being disturbed by a single note of discord. 
Can you think of God as ever likely to get out of temper, 
because of some person or thing defeating His purpose? 
Can His plans be defeated ? or is there any one outside of 
Himself that can make Him angry ? The very thought seems 
preposterous, and yet you will probably quote to me this 
passage of scripture: Is it not written that - c God is angry 
with the wicked every day?" Precisely. " Well, what 
does that mean? It is a humanized idea of God. It cer- 



OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 2 g 

tainly cannot be God's idea of Himself. Mortal man 
knows that he Sfets angry when he cannot have his own 
way, and he infers that God is just like him, for he assumes 
there is in existence a principle of evil, a satan somewhere, 
that would upset the plans of God, and thereby make Him 
angry. Mortal man forgets that in the same Bible it says, 
"My ways are not your ways, neither are your thoughts 
my thoughts, saith the Lord;" but we have long been 
educated in the belief that these bodies with all their pas- 
sions are the creation of God, and therefore the conclu- 
sion is, that like as we get angry, so does God, but of 
course under a greater provocation, which is supposed 
to exist in the malice of satan, and manifested in the wick- 
edness of the material or mortal man. 

The spiritual signification of the passage must be, 
That Truth cannot harmonize with error; opposites can 
not meet and fraternize; good and evil cannot be mixed. 
Such a construction presents no difficulty, and we think 
will commend itself to all as being- the true meaning:. So 
this word (propitiation) can never be scientifically applied 
to God, for He is never out of temper; no possible circum- 
stance can ever rile Him or disturb the eternal harmony in 
which " Our Father" dwells. A friend and namesake of 
mine, who is not a Christian Scientist, but a scholar, and 
devoted student of the Bible, in commenting upon this 
passage in Heb. 4 and 17, " Wherefore in all things it be- 
hooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he 
might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things 
pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the 
people," says, " This passage at first thought seems to 
convey the idea of Christ doing something to make God 
willing to forgive the sinner, or to induce him to remit the 
penalty; but a little farther thought will convince us that 



jo A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

this idea cannot be true, because God loves the sinner and 
has Himself made full provision, not only for his pardon, 
but also for his deliverance from sin; and this God has 
done of His own free will, unsolicited, but simply in the 
carrying out of His plan of creation ; therefore it cannot be 
that He is to be propitiated, or appeased, and yet, so the 
creeds put it; and this great lie, that God's favor and good- 
will can be bought, has laid the foundation of many shame- 
ful abuses and foul superstitions." 

The Romish Church builds on this lie its false doc- 
trine of purgatory, prayers for the dead, the intercession 
of the virgin Mary and the saints indulgences, absolu- 
tions, etc. The Protestant Chureh has dropped these 
dogmas, but it still retains the essence of them all, in the 
idea that a part of Christ's office is to propitiate or con- 
ciliate the Father in the sinner's behalf, thus conveying 
the false notion that God's favor and good-will is not 
spontaneous and unchangeable, but that it vacillates accord- 
ing to the merit or demerit of the individual, and may 
increase or diminish according as more or less is done to 
conciliate Him; I do not say that the creeds state the above 
in so many words, but this is the idea implied in them, 
and the practical belief of those who accept them." In 
the second book of Kings, the fifth chapter, we have a 
beautiful account of the work of a little Hebrew maid, 
who had been taken captive by a company of the Syrian 
army and carried into slavery. She became the waiting- 
maid of Naaman's wife. He was chief of the Assyrian 
host and a great man with the King, but a leper. One 
day this Hebrew girl said to her mistress: " Would God 
my Lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria, for He 
would recover him of his leprosy." This little word of 
Truth soon found a soil, it grew rapidly, for it was not 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 3 i 

long before Naaman, with a letter from his Master to the 
King of Israel, a great retinue of servants, and a very 
handsome present, was on his way to the prophet of Sama- 
ria. He soon reached the King of Israel, who mistook his 
visit. At length he found his way to the house of the 
prophet Ehsha, who did not as much as come to the door 
to see this distinguished man, but sent his servant to tell 
him " to go and wash seven times in the river Jordan, and 
thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean." 
Such conduct was more than the dignity of Namaan was 
able to bear, so "Naaman was wrath and w r ent away, and 
said, behold, I thought he would come out to me, and 
stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike 
his hand over the place and remove the leperosy. Are not 
Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all 
the waters of Israel ? May I not wash in them and be 
clean ? So he turned and went aw r ay in a rage." 

Such is a fair specimen of mortal mind. It always 
turns away from God's methods and ways. Just at this 
juncture, a sensible servant came forward and said, " My 
father, if the prophet had bid thee to do some great thing 
wouldst thou not have done it: How much rather then 
when he saith to thee, wash and be clean?" These words 
of gentleness and truth soothed him down, appeased his 
anger, turned him round. He went to Jordan, and lo, such 
a demonstration of the power of God, that words were not 
enough to express his gratitude. What a lesson, and espe- 
cially to those who have been healed by Christian Science, 
to acknowledge God. But what we wish to point out in 
this illustration chiefly is, that it was not the prophet, as 
the representative of God, who needed to be conciliated, 
but Xaaman. He was the vexed and angry one. He had 
turned his face from the light, and was going away in a 



32 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

rage. Just so it is with mortal man. Turning from 
God, he starts for Abanar and Pharpar, creations of riis 
own beliefs, and expects to find in them the antidote for 
human ills. Man tries in vain. Jesus comes to the rescue, 
not to make God willing to help, but to dissipate, with the 
Truth, the beliefs of mortal mind, and show man, that he 
has not to go beyond himself for healing power, but that 
right with him is the Life, Truth, and Love that destroys 
sin, sickness and death. 

There are two or three words akin to " propitiation" 
which we will now consider, as they are so frequently 
used in setting forth the doctrine of the atonement. The 
next is " Intercession," which carries a similar thought in 
theology as the word propitiation, with this exception : 
Propitiation refers more particularly to the work of actual 
sacrifice, to the incarnation, sufferings and death of Jesus, 
while intercession is the argument which Jesus is 
supposed to have used with His Father, as a reason why 
He should pardon the sinner. The following very popu- 
lar hymn will show how the intercession of Jesus is re- 
garded by what is called orthodox theology. It is one of 
Wesley's : 

Arise my soul, arise, 

Shake off thy guilty fears, 
The bleeding sacrifice 

In my behalf appears ; 
Before the throne my surety stands, 
My name is written on His hands. 

He ever lives above, 

For me to intercede, 
His all-redeeming love, 

His precious blood, to plead ; 
His blood atoned for all our race, 
And sprinkles now the throne of grace. 



OF THE A TOXEMEXT. jj 

Five bleeding wounds he bears, 

Received on Calvary ; 
They pour effectual prayers, 

They strongly speak for me ; 
" Forgive him, O forgive,'' they cry, 
" Nor let that ransomed sinner die!" 

The Father hears Him pray, 

His dear annointed one; 
He cannot turn away 

The presence of His Son ; 
The spirit answers to the blood 
And tells me I am born of God. 

At one time we thought this a most beautiful hymn, 
frequently gave it out in our services, and sung it with 
much earnestness and delight, but now as we turn upon it 
the light of Truth, it seems to us a gross misrepresenta- 
tion of the character of God, whose name and nature is 
Love. On page 219 of the first volume of the " Spirit of 
the Word," published in 1885 by A. P. Adams, of Beverly, 
Massachusetts, we find such an unfolding of the error of 
what is called orthodox theology on this subject of inter- 
cession, that we prefer to give you the opinion of one who 
lays no claim to being a Christian Scientist. " The great 
preacher, Spurgeon, in one of his sermons thus illustrates 
this point: He tells a story of a man in Cuba who had 
violated some of the laws of the island, and was sentenced 
to be shot; he was English born and a naturalized citizen 
of America, therefore both the consuls of those two coun- 
tries interfered in the man's behalf; but the local govern- 
ment was obdurate and revengeful, refused to release him, 
and said that he must die. Accordingly at the appointed 
time the man was brought out to the place of execution 
and a line of soldiers posted to do the deadly work, but 
before the fatal discharge the two consuls appeared on the 



3 4 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

scene, and making their way to the condemned man they 
threw over him the folds of the American and English 
flags, and dared the authorities to fire upon him. Thus cov- 
ered they dare not do it, the man was released, and his life 
saved. 

Now, says Mr. Spurgeon, as long as I am covered 
with the robes of Christ's righteousness, God can not pour 
on me the vials of His wrath. Unprotected I am exposed 
to the terrible penalty of a broken law and a justly angry 
God. There is no mercy for me out of Christ. But with 
Christ between me and the law, protected by riim, u e., 
protected from God, I am safe; and so on in this line. Just 
think of the illustration! How awfully it maligns God's 
character! It compares him to the Cuban authorities 
thirsting for the blood of the transgressor of their laws, 
and Christ is represented by the brave and humane con- 
suls who risked their own lives to save the life of their 
fellowman. Is such a representation true? No, no, a 
thousand times no! How thoughtless and blind men must 
be to thus place in the most glaring contrast with God, 
Him who is the brightness of His glory and the express 
image of His substance. But now, on the other hand, if 
we know God we shall understand that Christ's dealings 
with the Father are not of the above character at all, but 
that the idea of an intercessor is wholly for man's benefit. 
The fact that we have a friend at court is for our comfort 
and encouragement ; the King himself loves us ; but that is 
the last thing that we will believe, and to help us to see 
that blessed Truth, Christ is given as a go-between to 
"manifest" (first of John iv.,9 and 10,) the Father's love." 

There is another passage in which the word interces- 
sion is employed, Heb. vii., 25 : " Wherefore he is able 
also to save them to the uttermost who come to God 



OF THE A TONEMENT. jj 

through Him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession 
for them." This is identical in meaning with first 
John i., 2, where the word advocate is employed: " My 
beloved children, I write these things to you that you may 
not sin. But if any one sin we have an advocate with the 
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." In first of Timothy 
n., 5, the word mediator is used: "For there is one God, 
one mediator also between God and men, the man Jesus 
Christ." The three words, intercessor, advocate and medi - 
ator are akin in meaning, and are intended to convey to 
mortal man in his conscious helplessness the idea that he has 
in Jesus Christ a prese?zt helper. Not an advocate pleading 
with God to induce him to love and compassion, but that 
side by side with him he has a helper, some one that can 
and does show him how to overcome all sin, and thus 
remove the seeming clouds that hide the smiles of his lov- 
ing father, and bring him, by the Truth, into the conscious- 
ness that he is not a material being, subject to sin, sick- 
ness and death, but a spiritual being, reflecting the Life, 
Truth, and Love which God, man's Father, is. Paul 
expresses the correct idea in his second letter to the Cor- 
inthians, v., 18 and 19: "And all things are from God 
who hath reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ 
(thus you see God's work is finished), and hath given to 
us the ministry of the reconciliation, namely, that God 
was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not im- 
puting their trespasses to them, and hath committed to us 
the word of reconciliation." There are many other pass- 
ages which carry the same thought, but we presume the 
foregoing will suffice. 

The words mediator and advocate are so nearly allied 
in meaning, though often and separately used in theology 
to set forth the doctrine of atonement, that it will not be 



j6 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

necessary to speak of both, simply of one, say, mediator. 
He is one who comes between two or more parties at vari- 
ance for the purpose of reconciling them. That is the 
work of Jesus Christ with man; He knows that His 
father is our father, and that He loves us with an everlast- 
ing love, that we are His spiritual children, and that this 
material personality which claims to be a child of God, is 
a claim without a claimant, having no Ego, Truth, or fact 
as its basis of support; simply a belief, an illusion, an 
appearance that goes out forever before the Truth, which 
Jesus taught and demonstrated. The atoning work of 
Jesus is the revealing and proving of this blessed Truth to 
man. 



OF THE A TOXEMENT. 37 



FIFTH LECTURE. 

In this lecture we come to the consideration of the 
word " redemption," which is so frequently employed 
in the setting forth and explanation of the doctrine of 
atonement. We derive the word from two Latin words, 
" Re," which means " again" or u back," and " Emere," 
" to buy," so that the literal meaning of the word redemp- 
tion is the act of buying back, by payment or presentation 
of something to an owner, which he accepts as an equiva- 
lent in value to him for a thing he is asked to give up, or 
relinquish his claim upon. The redemption of humanity 
by the life, suffering and death of Jesus is often illustrated 
by the purchase and liberation of a slave. The assump- 
tion in such purchase is, that the slave's master has a 
just claim upon him, which he is not willing to forego 
unless an equivalent in money, or its equal, is paid to him. 
When that is done and legally attested, the slave is deliv- 
ered from bondage. 

According to the old line of teaching, Jesus Christ is 
represented as having paid the price and redeemed man. 
Then we ask in all fairness, if the price of man's redemp- 
tion is paid, and paid to the full, why is man not* free? 
Who is so dishonest as to hold him in bondage w r hen the 
supposed master has been paid to let him go? The price 
for man's redemption, we are told, was paid on Calvary 
more than eighteen hundred years ago. How comes it to 
pass then, that he is still in sin, " Led captive by the devil 
at his will," and if anything, his slavery is more abject and 
galling than it has ever been before. If any judgment can 
be formed, from the appearance of this world at the pres- 
ent time, we must conclude that man is not redeemed ac- 



S 8 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

cording to the old notion, or his old master has either gone 
back upon the bargain, or is supporting his dishonesty in 
holding man in slavery, by a power which Jesus Christ 
himself is not able to destroy. 

Nearly two thousand years has elapsed since the re- 
demption price was paid, and man's condition seems tc be 
worse to-day, notwithstanding all the efforts of the 
churches in assisting Jesus in carrying out his plans, that 
is, if we are to judge from the testimony of those who are 
supposed to be competent to form an opinion. 

Quite recently at the " Reform Presbyterian Synod" 
held in Pittsburgh, at which were present one hundred 
and sixty delegates, representing congregations from nearly 
every state in the Union, the Rev. J. B. Thomason, of the 
committee on the times, read an interesting paper, which 
contained the statement that " instead of the church pene- 
trating the world, the world was penetrating the church, 
and was playing havoc generally." 

This is the universal lament from every church con- 
ference in the country. What is the matter? This does 
not look as if mankind was redeemed. Man is never re- 
deemed while he is under the dominion of sin, sickness and 
death. A personal Jesus can never redeem man, but the 
Truth taught by Jesus, apprehended and lived, Can. He 
said : u Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall 
make you free." 

Just as long as the churches direct the attention of 
the people to a personal Jesus, and not the Christ, the 
Truth, Life and Love, which is all, there being none other 
beside, just that long failure will result from their efforts. 

The falsity of the old line of teaching will be seen if 
we consider without prejudice, but simply a desire to know 
the Truth: 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 3 q 

(1) Who is the natural man's master that holds him 
in slavery? Jesus said: " Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." (John 
viii. and 34.) And Paul said: "Know ye not that to 
whom ye yield yourselves servants to obev, his servants ye 
are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of 
obedience unto righteousness ?" (Rom. vi. and 16.) 
Again he said: " For I know that in me, that is, in my 
flesh, dwelleth no good thing ; for to will is present with 
me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not, 
for the good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I 
would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is 
no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find 
then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with 
me." (Rom. vii. and 18-21.) 

From this scripture it will appear, that sin is the 
master of this natural or carnal man, and that that sin is 
not in the inner or true man, but in the flesh. Now if sin 
is the master, are we to infer that sin has a claim on man 
which it will not let go, till Jesus has given to it a price to 
relinquish its hold upon man? Did Jesus Christ pay the 
price of man's redemption to the devil, whom Jesus de- 
nounces as a murderer, a liar and the father of all lies, to 
induce him to let the sinner go free? Never! a million 
times never. Old theology may say, "No; the payment 
was made to divine justice, to God." How does that help 
the matter? Does God hold mortal man in bondage, that 
is, compel him to remain in error or sin until a redemption 
price is paid to let him go? Is the price paid to God, to 
induce Him to grant deliverance to His creature man? 
That cannot be, for if Christ is God, as John and all so- 
called orthodoxy and theological teachers say, then God 
must have paid the price to Himself for the release of 



4 o A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

man? Can anything be more absurd? If such were the 
case, it would be as if the slave-owner should take his own 
money from his pocket, a thousand or more dollars, just 
what he supposed the slave to be worth, and pay it into 
the bank, for the benefit of himself, and then set his slave 
at liberty because his value had been paid to him by him- 
self. We know you will smile at the ridiculousness of 
such a transaction, and yet that is in substance the very 
thing we are asked to believe about a God of infinite wis- 
dom, love and almighty power. No! No! You must 
pass that on, or rather back to the hallucinations of the 
carnal mind, for we cannot predicate such an act as that of 
God. 

"Well," says the objector, " that is not exactly what 
we mean." What do you mean then? "We mean that 
man has sinned, and by that sin he has offended the divine 
justice, and justice cannot release the sinner, until its 
claims are met. The sinner must be punished for his sin, 
and the only way in which justice can be satisfied is in 
the administration of the penalty of the violated law, or 
something must be done for the sinner which justice will 
regard as an equivalent for the sinner's punishment, and 
that equivalent was paid* in the incarnation, suffering and 
death of Jesus Christ." 

Well, all this does not disprove, but only confirms 
what we have just said; that God is offended by man's 
sin, and by his own act and deed you represent him as 
furnishing the means by which he cools down his own 
anger. It is not man, according to your representation, 
that appeases the anger of God, by something which he 
does for offending God, but God, by His own act and 
deed, makes atonement to Himself for Himself. He allows 
Himself to get offended by what man does, and then, ac- 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 4 i 

cording to your idea, punishes Himself to make atonement 
for man's sin. 

If vou can see the manifestation of infinite wisdom 
and love in a scheme of this kind to redeem man, your 
vision far exceeds any conception which we can form of 
infinite wisdom. Further, old theology tells us, that justice 
(by which we suppose is meant God) cannot relax its hold 
on the sinner, till its claim is met. Let us inquire: What 
is the claim or obligation which man is under to God ? Is 
it not to be good, as God is, to love Him with all the 
heart, to have no other God, to hate lying, stealing, covet- 
ousness, pride, malice, envy, adultery, revenge, murder and 
every evil thing? 

Can the claim of justice or God be less than this? Can 
God let up one iota on that claim? No indeed. And do 
you propose to give some consideration to God, by which 
He can and will release mortal man from his obligation to 
resist evil of all kinds? No vicarious suffering of Jesus 
Christ, uor anything else that can be done for us by another 
will ever relax the demand to be good and perfect even as 
God is perfect. Each one must be consciously right, in 
thought and act, before the hold of eternal right can ever 
be relaxed. 

While our common sense constrains us to reject the 
old interpretation of redemption, we are delighted to tell 
you there is a redemption of man, which, when explained 
in the light of Christian Science, we think will commend 
itself to every man's conscience in the sight ot God, as 
being the Truth, but of that each one for himself must be 
the judge. Thus far, we have explained to you the old 
ideas of the atonement, and now we propose to give you 
the Christian Science view, or rather what seems to us in 
perfect harmony with the spiritual teaching of scripture 



42 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

and reason. We deliberately say reason, which we regard 
As synonymous with our spiritual intuitions, and as Emer- 
son has justly said, " That which another announces to me 
I must find true within myself, or reject." 

We make no affirmation that our view of the atone- 
ment is the absolutely correct one, to us it is true, and the 
perception of it from this stand-point has brought a freight 
of health, peace and blessing, that no language of ours can 
adequately describe. Our earnest desire is that it may be 
so to you ; our friend and brother in Christ. 

Mr. Adams, of Beverley, Massachusetts, though not 
a Christian Scientist, and not able yet to see things from 
our stand-point, has gi ven us in a general summary of the 
orthodox teaching of the atonement, twelve propositions, 
containing his objections to the old theology. They are 
so thoroughly in harmony with the views of Christian 
Scientists that we prefer to give them, (with our own 
comments thereon,) in order that you may see how others, 
who are not tinctured with Christian Science, regard this 
fundamental doctrine of the Christian Church. 

Before doing so, however, let me affirm once for 
all, that the oft-repeated charge against us, viz: That "we 
utterly deny the doctrine of the atonement," is not true. 
We believe in, and teach the doctrine of the atonement,, 
but our interpretation of what the scriptures teach, on that 
subject, is vastly different from what is taught by so-called 
orthodoxy. 

We cordially endorse the following view of the atone- 
ment as set forth in Mrs. Eddy's book "Science and 
Health," Page 527, " Atonement; the teachings, demon- 
strations and sufferings of the man, Jesus, when showing 
mortals the way of salvation from sin, sickness and death: 
Divine Science; Soul's triumph over material sense; the 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 43 

supremacy of spirit asserted; man reassuming the image 
and likeness of God, in His scientific at-one-ment with Him. 
Jesus of Nazareth, gave the all important proof, that 
when God is understood, it will be seen that God creates 
man, and man cannot for the smallest moment be without 
a bodv. This Divine Science overcame death and the 
grave, and was Jesus' final demonstration that the body is 
the same after, as before death. It follows that there is a 
future state of probation and progress; wherein to grow 
out of a material, and into the spiritual sense of existence. 

The meek and mighty Nazarene exhibited a material 
body, after the crucifixion, to show His followers the great 
need there is of spiritualizing thought and action, in order 
to make man God-like before he reaches what is termed 
death; that after it, he may be fit for the higher school 
of the "just made perfect." Not death, but the under- 
standing of Life or God, spiritualizes man and determines 
forever His spiritual progress and His physical condition. 
Atonement stands for mortality, disappearing, and immor- 
tality, coming to light; for self abnegation and love, bless- 
ing Truth's enemies. Atonement is not blood from the 
veins of Jesus, but his out-flow T ing sense of Life, Truth and 
Love; so much higher, purer and more God-like than 
mankind's, shedding its hallowed influence over the whole 
human race, and marking out the only way to heaven. 

Atonement is not so much the death on the cross, but 
the cross bearing deathless life, which was left by Jesus 
for an example to mankind, and ransoms from sin all who 
follow it." 

Now let us consider the twelve propositions of our 
friend in relation to the atonement. 

(I) " 7 he atonement was not to satisfy God^s jus- 
tice, but to reveal His love" 



44 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

We endorse this for the following reasons, the highest 
conception that we can form of justice is, that it consists 
in being right and doing right. No one will doubt the 
rightness of God. "Just and right is He," and because 
He is so, all His manifestations must correspond to His 
nature. Mortal man is not just and right in all his ways, 
but justice demands that he shall be, and rest he will never 
have until he is. How then is he brought into that state 
of being, by virtue of which he will do right? It is evi- 
dent that he must have the right thought, or he cannot have 
the right act, as all action is but the expression of thought. 
" As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." The reason 
why man's actions are not in harmony with the right, is, 
because his thoughts are wrong. The latter is a reflection 
of the former, the connection is that of cause and effect, 
and can never be anything else. If then the deeds of man 
are to be reformed, the reformation must begin with the 
thought of which the act is but an expression. If the act 
is an error, then the thought must be. So the first thing 
to be done is to correct the thought and the other will 
follow as a matter of course. How is that correction of 
thought to be brought about, or how is man to be brought 
into harmony with the just, right and true? The doing 
of that must be the work of the atonement, bringing 
together or making one. 

Jesus, and Jesus only, shows us as no one else has ever 
done, just how that thing is to be done. His recognition 
of, and personal conformity to the eternal law of right can 
never make me right, or bring me to the consciousness 
that I am right. Neither can His sufferings and death 
satisfy the demands of justice for me. As a man, He was 
just as much under obligation to do right and conform to 
the law of right, to the utmost extent of His ability as I 



OF THE A TOXEMENT. 45 

am, and hence He could not perform any work of supere- 
rogation which He thought His love could transfer to me 
to supply my deficiency. Justice says, " I do not want the 
goodness of Jesus as a substitute for yours. My demand 
is that YOU shall be right in thought, word and act, and L 
can never let you have the consciousness of being at one 
with me until you are." In order that we may attain to 
the consciousness of being good and doing good, Jesus 
comes, not to do the good, or conform to that which is 
right in the stead of us, but by His blessed example to 
show us how to be and do just as He did. 

How did He show us the way? By denying His 
personality and all material claims. He said distinctly, "I 
came not to do my own will, but the will of Him that 
sent me." And at the well of Samaria, He said to His 
disciples, as they urged Him to eat, " My meat is to do the 
will of Him that sent me, and to accomplish His work." 
Hence His first and most important lesson to those who 
would follow Him, that is, be as He was and do as He 
did, is set forth in those words " If any man will come 
after me, let him deny himself, (that is, his personality 
and all that appertains to it,) and take up his cross daily, 
and follow me." " Except a man forsake all that he hath, 
he cannot be my disciple." This absolute renunciation of 
personality, and following Jesus daily, is not something 
which He does for us, instead of our doing it, but it is 
something which each one must do for themselves, or it 
will never be done. 

This will be made very plain if we consider the differ- 
ence between the two prepositions, ''for" and " instead." 
The writer which we have before alluded to, is so beauti- 
ful and clear on this point, that we prefer to give you his 
explanation. He says, under the title of "substitution." 



46 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

— The following is not exactly a scientific way of put- 
ting it, but if you substitute Jesus for the Christ, as Christ 
stands for Life, Truth and Love, and hence can never die, 
as death is commonly understood, you will have no diffi^ 
culty in recognizing the important distinction between for 
and instead. — 

" Substitution is as much out of place in the doctrine 
of the atonement, as it is in the doctrine of sanctification. 
But if the above be true, how shall we understand such 
Scriptures as the following? He "tasted death for every 
man," the " just for the unjust," " He bore our sins," etc. 
All this class of scripture is made plain, when w r e notice 
the difference between the two prepositions for and instead. 
Christ died for us, but He did not die instead of us. In 
His death He was man's companion, associate, "elder 
brother," but He was not man's substitute. He suffered 
with man and on man's behalf, being " made in all things 
like unto His brethren," and we follow Him, as our fore- 
runner, in just the same way that He trod, sharing His 
sufferings, bearing His reproach, " being made conform- 
able unto His death" (what ever that death was, see 
1-3-52), and thereby coming at last to be " like Him" 1 
John iii, 2. 

There is not a particle of substitution in all this, but 
perfect identity of experience (see 1-3-101, 102 and 103); 
w^e are one with Him in His humiliation, suffering and 
death, and one with Him in exaltation, glory and resur- 
rection life. Christ does not endure a penalty and certain 
sufferings, and a death, in order that we may not endure 
the same, as He would do if He were our substitute; but 
He endures the same suffering and the same death that we 
endure, and He walked in the same "ways of life" (Acts 
ii. 28) in which we must walk in order to reach "the same 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 47 

image." Even that supposed stronghold of substitution, 
the 53d chapter of Isaiah, is in perfect harmony with the 
foregoing view. Read verses 4 and 5 ; now turn to Matt, 
viii. 16, 17, and see how this was fulfilled. Christ a bore 
our griefs and carried our sorrows," not as a substitute, 
but as a sympathizing companion and friend. He was 
man's great Burden-bearer (sin included, see John i. 29, 
margin) not that man might be exempted altogether from 
the burden (for "every man shall bear his own burden," 
Gal. vi. 6), but that man might be taught how to bear it, 
the reason for bearing it, and, above all, might be delivered 
from the death-load (Rom. vii. 24, 25) in God's "due 
season." 



48 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 



SIXTH LECTURE. 

(2) The next proposition that we shall consider is: 

" The justice of God is not against the sinner, demand- 
ing his condemnation, but FOR him, insuring his salva- 
tion ." 

This may seem a strange statement to make, for we 
have always been educated in the belief, that the inflex- 
ible justice of God demanded the eternal doom of the sin- 
ner, if he did not avail himself of the atonement which 
had been provided for him in Jesus Christ. It has been 
represented to us, and we have many times so represented 
it to our congregations, that the justice of God was such, 
and His nature so unchangeable, that He could not do oth- 
erwise than consign the finally impenitent to eternal tor- 
ment, not only as a just punishment for their own sins, 
but as a guarantee to the rest of His children, (who are 
supposed to be in Heaven with Him, beholding the mani- 
festation of His justice on their brothers and sisters for 
persistency in sin), and an evidence of Ihe immutability of 
God's nature, and their own eternal security, for we were 
told, in substance, again and again, that the stability of the 
throne of the Eternal rested upon the everlasting punish- 
ment of the wicked. 

As some may think, this is an extravagant statement, 
made, for the sake of effect, we have simply to say, that 
not three years ago, one of the most orthodox and influ- 
ential denominations in this country, did, through an asso- 
ciation of some of its most able ministers, expel us from 
the ministry, not for immoral conduct, but because we told 
them that we could no longer hold and preach such a 
false doctrine. 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 49 

For thirty years we had believed and thought, that 
faith in the doctrine of endless punishment was essential to 
the salvation of the soul, and when, by a better understand- 
ing of the nature and unchanging love of God, we were 
led to see, that endless punishment was an impossibility 
that the nature of God, (Love) was such, that he could 
not create and sustain a flace called hell, that denomination 
had no further use for us. 

May God forgive us for such a misrepresentation of 
Him, who is unchanging love, for we can scarce forgive 
ourselves. A little reflection on the nature of punishment 
and justice will help to blot out this horrible belief con- 
cerning God. What injustice but eternal rectitude, con- 
stant uprightness, perfection of being. Straight, not 
crooked, right not wrong; likeness to God of whom the 
scriptures say, "Just and right is He, and holy in all His 
ways." Justice demands that I shall be that, like God, 
holy as He is holy, good as He is good, love as He is love, 
that nothing shall exist in the universe of God that is un- 
like Himself, and that demand of justice can never be 
relaxed one iota until all conscious being is in perfect har- 
mony with God, with Love. 

Now, suppose my carnal nature, or personality, rebels 
against this principle of Justice or Love, for Justice and 
Love are identical. Will the principle of eternal rectitude 
punish my personality or carnal nature with endless misery ? 
Please note, we say, personality or carnal nature, because 
my spiritual nature which is of God and in God cannot 
sin, and hence cannot be subject to punishment any more 
than God can, for my spiritual nature, that is, my true 
selfhood is an exact image and likeness of Himself, and 
therefore cannot sin, as the scriptures say, "Whatsoever is 
born of God doth not commit sin, and he cannot sin, be- 



50 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

cause his seed, that is the very nature of God, abideth in 
him." If, then, the fleshly or carnal man is the only man 
that can sin, and by sin become subject to punishment, let 
us inquire what is punishment and who is it that inflicts 
it? Punishment according to mortal mind's belief of it is: 
The judicial infliction of suffering, deprivation of liberty, 
because of some offence supposed to have been committed 
against the rights of another. It is the execution of the 
penalty, (whatever that may be), of violated law. Now 
if law is the .expression of one or more persons, and those 
persons attach a penalty of suffering to the violation of 
law, they must do so upon the basis that there are persons 
with wills to* antagonize law and order, and that those per- 
sons must be kept in subjection by the fear of punishment. 
Does the Principle of justice, eternal rectitude, or God 
know of any being who has power to question or antag- 
onize eternal harmony? Certainly not, for if He did, 
then God would know that He was not a//, filling immen- 
sity, beside whom there was none; then if there is none 
but God and His spiritual manifestations, which are only 
the expressions of right, Truth, holiness and love, what 
need is there of law to regulate God and His manifesta- 
tions, with a penalty of suffering, to hold the image and 
likeness of God in fear and subjection to what we call au- 
thority? The fact is, in the realm of spirit, or reality, 
there is no law, and consequently no punishment. Thus 
we see that in Truth, law, with its penalties and suffering 
for violation, is neither more nor less than a false human 
conception which goes down and out forever, before the 
apprehended Truth that, " God is Love." In this we have 
another instance of how mortal man believes that God 
manages and controls His spiritual children and the uni- 
verse, just as material man regulates the affairs of this 






OF THE A TONEMENT, ji 

mundane sphere. All God's children are free, but where 
law is, there is no Freedom. 

God is Love; Man and the spiritual universe is an 
expression of it. What does love need of law, with re- 
strictions and penalties to keep it on the line of right, when 
it never seeks her own, but always another's welfare? 
Again, punishment, according to human conception, has a 
two-fold object ; first, to maintain what is called the majesty 
of law for the good of human society, and second, it 
always contemplates the reformation of the criminal; hence 
punishment is supposed to be remedial, indeed it is admin- 
istered with that design. Human experience proves that 
the fear of punishment deters from crime, but it has never 
been known to change the disposition, or heart; Truth, 
and Truth alone, does that, for just as long as the thought 
of selfishness is held in the mortal mind, just that long 
selfishness will manifest itself in act. 

The other day I saw a tree cut down level with the 
ground, and supposed it w r as the ground, until I saw green 
shoots springing out of what seemed to be the dust, but 
on examination, (for green shoots appearing in the dust 
of a high road arrested my attention), I found the roots of 
quite a large tree. So you may whip the body, subject it 
to beliefs of great pain and deprivation, but while the 
thought of selfishness is held in the mind, it is liable to 
burst out at any time. If punishment was remedial, the 
amount of it that has been inflicted upon the human race 
has been enough during the last six thousand years to have 
purified a dozen worlds like ours, but instead of lessening 
crime, the basic thought or source of which is selfishness, 
the world never presented, on the whole, more gross and 
refined selfishness, than it does to-day, which we look 
upon, not as a cause of discouragement but an unmistakable 



5 2 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

sign, that mortal Man was never nearer committing sui- 
cide than now, or being forced to acknowledge that Truth 
perceived and undersood is the o?ily regenerator. 

" Still," you say, " There is suffering, and that suffer- 
ing is what we call punishment for wrong doing, and just 
as long as wrong is done, just that long there w^ill be suf- 
fering." That is so, according to the belief of the carnal 
mind, but who makes the laws for the carnal man, and who 
inflicts the punishment? God knows nothing of him, for 
all God knows is good, so that we are shut up to the con- 
clusion that the carnal man, claiming himself to be a real 
man, makes his own laws and executes his own penalties. 
He decrees for himself, and so it comes to pass, he makes 
hygienic laws concerning the atmosphere, food, drink and 
clothing, investing by his belief those things w^ith intelli- 
gence and power, giving them rules of action, and then 
says to himself, now if you do not obey those rules you will 
suffer for the violation. So it is with sin. Mortal man 
decides by his belief what is sin, and what is not sin, and 
to the sin of refusing to accept what he calls the atoning 
work of Jesus Christ, he attaches the penalty of eternal 
misery. He constructs a theological theory of sin, then a 
remedy for it, then a penalty for not accepting the remedy, 
and then says, that these are God's Laws, and God's acts 
of discipline, and punishment for disobedience, while all 
the time, " God is too pure to behold iniquity." 

Let me further show the utter fallacy of this eternal 
punishment business. According to the old idea, the per- 
sistently impenitent are sent to an eternal hell to secure 
the ends or demands of justice, and, when once there, the 
wicked have no possible chance of getting out, or even 
becoming better, the dye is said to be cast, and their doom 
irrevocably fixed. Now, we ask, in the light of common 



OF THE A TOXEMEXT. jj 

sense and sober earnestness, how is the end of justice, 
(which is constant conformity to right), to be secured, if 
you put a person where there is no possibility of their be- 
coming better, but where they are fixed in a state of antag- 
onism to love, for love is not the fruit of punishment, but 
fear is. Why, if punishment produced love to God, it 
would not be long before hell would be turned into 
Heaven. 

When I was a boy I lived in the city of London, on 
White Cross Street. On that street was a debtor's prison, 
in which persons who had got into debt were put, until 
they paid their debts. Some were kept there for years, 
and died there, because while in prison they had no means 
for earning money to pay their debt. The folly of de- 
manding of a man the payment of his debts, and then put- 
ting him in a place where it was impossible for him to 
earn a cent, was seen in due time and the prison emptied. 
Who can conceive of God being guilty of such folly ? So 
we see, that what is called the demands of justice, prop- 
erly understood, is really a guarantee that every sinner 
will be eventually saved, and that salvation will consist, 
not in the salvation of the soul, for God is the life and 
soul of Man, but in the utter destruction of the sense of 
sin, which belongs entirely to the personal man or the 
carnal mind, which is not subject to the law of God, neither 
indeed can be, hence it has to be destroved, not preserved 
in hell, but utterlv consumed bv the understandinof of the 
Truth, or God, for our God, who is Love, and Justice, is a 
consuming fire. Justice will never relax its claim for all 
to be right, until the claim of the carnal man, with all his 
beliefs of sin, sickness, punishment and death, shall be seen 
and known to be claimless, that the carnal mind, with all 
its beliefs of personalties is no mind, that it has no Truth 



5 4 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

in it, no Principle, fact or Ego as its basis of support, that 
it is simply a cloud without water, an illusion which ap- 
peareth for a little while and then vanisheth away. 

Then will appear, without a cloud between, the true 
Man, the individual, the concrete thought of the most 
High; sinless, sickless, deathless, the perfect manifestation 
of Life, Truth, Love, Intelligence, and Power. Until 
these sons of God are manifest, Truth, which is justice, 
will never cease to agitate or shine until every cloud is dis- 
persed and the words of Jesus verified. " The kingdom 
of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in 
three measures of meal till the whole was leavened?" 
If an immense number of the human race are to be shut 
up in an eternal hell how can the WHOLE be leavened? 
For ourselves, we believe the words of Jesus to express 
the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, but we have 
no quarrel with those whose educational beliefs find end- 
less punishment necessary to meet the demands of God's 
justice. If it is any comfort for them to believe that their 
security in heaven is made more sure by the fact of millions 
of their brothers and sisters being in hell, we must simply 
wait until they get the better view. 

(3) The next proposition of our friend is: 

" God is not in contrast with, much less in opposi- 
tion to Christ in the atonement, but in perfect harmony 
and accordP 

In Science we learn that Christ is not a person, inde- 
pendent of God, and using his influence with God to induce 
Him to be gracious to the sinner, but as John tells us in 
the first chapter of his gospel, " Christ, the Word, was not 
only with God, but he was God, and that by him all 
things were made. And Paul in his letter to the Hebrews 
says that, "Christ was the express image of His, (the 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 55 

Father's,) substance and sustaining all things by the word 
of His power." Christ then is the Word, and the Word 
was with God and is God, hence Christ, according to the 
teaching of scripture, is the Divine Principle of Life, 
Truth, and Love, and this is confirmed by the direct teach- 
ing of Jesus, for when Philip said to him, " Show us the 
Father and it sufficeth us," Jesus replied, a Have I been so 
long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, 
Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and 
how sayest thou, show us the Father?" 

It is evident that the " Me" which Jesus referred to 
in this reply could not have been the personal Jesus, but 
the Divine principle of Life, Truth, and Love^ which the 
personal Jesus had endeavored to make manifest to Philip 
and his companions. So that the thought of Christ being 
in contrast with God as an independent person, operating 
upon God to induce him to do something, which if left to 
himself he would not be likely to do, is altogether foreign 
from the truth. 

(4) This leads us to the proposition : 

" The atonement is not the exclusive work of Christ, 
in order to reconcile God unto the world, but it is the work 
of God in Christ to reconcile the world unto Himself." 

In the work of the atonement, according to the old 
theology, Christ has always been represented as though 
He was a separate being from God, and the most con- 
spicuous person, loving and working for the sinner with 
an indefatigable zeal and self-abnegation, while the Father 
has been represented as not only looking on our miserable 
condition as sinners, but determined on punishing us for 
the least offense, hence from boyhood we have regarded 
the Father as a being we had to fear, but Jesus Christ, the 
son, as a being to love, because he was not only trying to 



j6. A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

appease the Father's anger toward us, but he had actually 
received on his own person the stripes that ought to have 
fallen on tfs; In Science we are constrained to take de- 
cided exception to this particular theory of the atonement 
for the following reasons : 

1. There are not two persons in the Godhead, one 
inflexible, just, and the other tender, loving, and merciful. 
We take our stand with Dr. Hodge, who says in his " Ex- 
position of the Westminister Confession of Faith: " God 
is an absolute unit, incapable of division." As long as this 
is true, there cannot be two persons in the Godhead, one 
seeking to influence the other to a certain course of action 
which he is not likely to pursue unless the second person 
can bring -forward considerations or reasons which will 
out-weigh his supposed objections to such a course of con- 
duct. ■ : ' 

2. The atonement is God's work from beginning to 
end, and iChrist the Truth or Word is the instrument by 
which it is accomplished. This seems to us to be the plain 
teaching qf Jesus, for in the conversation He is reported to 
have had with Nicodemus, he says: a For God so 
loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that 
whosoever believeth on Him may not perish but have 
everlasting life." From this it is evident that God, the 
Father is the source or spring from whence the salvation 
of man proceeds, and instead of the son inducing the 
Father to; be gracious to the sinner, the gift of the son is 
a manifestation of the Father's great heart of love. It was 
Jesus of Nazareth who first clearly apprehended the great 

Truth that God is love, and that love is not simply an 
attribute of God, but it is the very being or nature of God; 
He is Love and can never be anything else. Apprehend- 
ing this divine principle of Life, Truth and Love as con- 



OF THE A TONEMENT. j 7 

stituting God, "Our Father." Jesus made it known to 
humanity by His words, acts, and daily life; He showed 
us what the Father was, hence He said : " He that hath 
seen me hath seen the Father." Whatever we see in 
Jesus, of Life triumphant over death, holiness over im- 
purity, love over hate, intelligence over ignorance, and 
spirit over matter, we see in the Father, for it was not a vain 
declaration when He said: "land the Father are one," 
but the Truth speaking through the personal Jesus. 

Jesus did not create this love ot God to man, but by 
His superior spiritual perception He saw what existed al- 
ready, and so made it known to us, that we might attain a 
similar perception of the same blessed Truth, and by it 
become in due time conscious of our oneness, or " at-one- 
ment" with God. Thus we can see how Jesus is the 
Light and Saviour of the world, and that whoever follows 
Him shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light 
of life. Edison did not create electricity and its illumin- 
ating power, but he did by study, research, and experi- 
ment discover what it was and what could be done with 
it, and as a result of his findings it is possible for every 
city and town in the country to have the darkness of night 
transformed into daylight and beauty. 

So it has been with the blessed Jesus. He found out 
that sin was a belief of the carnal man ; that it had no 
reality any more than darkness, and as Edison by the ap- 
plication of electricity puts out the darkness of the darkest 
night, so Jesus puts out the belief of sin by the application 
of the Truth that God is love, and God is everywhere ; 
consequently in the realm of reality there is no such thing 
as sin. He saw, also, that what we call sickness was 
simply a belief of the mortal man. That sickness, in 
whatever form it might appear, whether as palsy, fever, 



jS A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

rheumatism, epilepsy, insanity, lameness, or blindness was 
only a claim of the mortal mind, an appearance with no 
reality or truth as its basis of support, hence he spoke the 
Truth which he perceived and knew, and with the dying 
echo of his spoken words, the apparently real and formid- 
able diseases faded away into their native nothingness. 
And so it w r as with what humanity calls " death." He 
knew that it also was a belief without a believer ; that no 
such cruel tyrant had a real existence ; that God, his Father 
and " Our Father," was the ever conscious, and every- 
where principle of Life, leaving no point of space in the 
vast immensity where the supposed monster, death, could 
erect a throne, and subject the children of God to the cruel 
scepter of his power. 

Death to Him was a mere illusion of belief, which 
His understanding of the principle of Life put out with a 
single spoken sentence of the Truth which He perceived 
and knew. "Lazarus come forth." And he that had 
been dead came forth. Why? Simply because there is 
no power but the power of an endless Life, which is God. 



OF THE A TONEMENT. j? 



SEVENTH LECTURE. 

The next proposition we shall consider in the general 
summary of the atonement is: 

" Christ yesus does not have to plead with God in 
order to ?nake him zvilling to pardon the sinner, but God 
by his ininisters beseeches the sinner to make him willing 
to be pardoned" 

This is the clear and oft repeated statement of scrip- 
ture, and how we have got it turned around the other way 
is a mystery we have given over trying to account for. 
'Let us cite some passages (2nd of Cor. 18-20,) reads as 
follows : 

" And all things are from God, who hath reconciled 
us to himself through Jesus Christ, and hath given to us 
the ministry of reconciliation: Namely, that God was in 
Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their 
trespasses to them, and hath committed to us the word of 
reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, 
as though God were entreating by us; we beseech you in 
Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." 

In Rom. 12 and 1, we read: " I exhort you there- 
fore, brethren, by the tender mercies of God, to present 
your bodies unto God, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, 
which is your reasonable service." 

Many others similar might be cited, but these will 
probably suffice to show that God is already reconciled, 
no anger burns in his bosom to be quenched by what is 
called the blood of atonement. He needs no Jesus Christ 
to plead with Him to be gracious and loving, neither is it 
necessary for the sinner, groaning under a sense of guilt to 
cry unto God in a prostrate condition of body and with 



60 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

bitter tears for God to have mercy upon him, as though 
God had not already done for the sinner all that he could 
do, for God can do no more. He has manifested the 
Truth (which puts out the beliefs of sin) in the person of 
Jesus the Christ, and through him, his ministers, and the 
" light which lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world," He is appealing like a loving Father. " Wisdom 
crieth without ; she uttereth her voice in the streets ; she 
crieth in the chief places of concourse, in the openings of 
the gates ; in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How 
long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity? And the 
scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowl- 
edge? Turn you at my reproof; behold, I will pour out 
my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto 
you." 

What could be more earnest, tender and loving, than 
the voice of Truth speaking through the lips of Jesus. 
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and 
learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye 
shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my 
burden is light." 

Through Isaiah the same blessed voice of Truth is 
heard: " Come now and let us reason together, saith the 
Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as 
white as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall 
be as wool." 

Does all this look as if God needed to be prayed unto 
by Jesus, or by the sinner to induce him to pardon sin ? 
No indeed! The scripture everywhere, when properly 
interpreted, represents God as knocking at our door, just 
as the risen sun is supposed to be saying to the sleepy, 
dreamy tenant of a room, " Wake up ! Wake up ! the 



OF THE A TOXEMENT. 61 

night is past, roll up the blinds, open the shutters, let me 
in, and I will scatter the darkness, and soon put out the 
horrible dreams and nightmares of your sleep." 

" Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any man 
hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into him, 
and sup with him, and he with me." 

The next proposition reads: 

" The atonement is ?wt to propitiate God, but man, 
not to make God favorably disposed toward man, but to 
make his already existing favor known to man" 

This statement is truly Scientific, Mortal man has 
been in ignorance of God. God, to him, has been mis- 
represented from the first. He has been lied about, and 
the natural man has believed the lie, the first record of 
which we have in the 3rd chapter of Genesis — let us see : 

" Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of 
the field which the Lord God had made. And he said 
unto the woman, yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of 
every tree of the garden? And tne woman said unto the 
serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden ; 
but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the 
garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall 
ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the 
woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know 
that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be 
opened, and ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil." 

If we should speak according to the common lan- 
guage of men, we must say, that a bigger lie of God was 
never told, and yet the natural man has believed it. It 
forms part of what is called orthodox theology. We have 
been educated from our infancy into the belief of its Truth, 
and from the belief of that lie as Truth, has come all of 
our beliefs of sin, sickness and death. 



62 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

Now let us unmask this lie and see if our statement is 
not true. In the first place: The Lord God, and this 
Lord God we have been taught is "Our Father," is 
charged with creating a serpent more subtle than any beast 
•of the field, investing that serpent, not only with an intel- 
ligence more than human, for he is represented as knowing 
more than Adam and Eve, but with a capacity to talk, and 
to talk with such intelligence, subtlity and eloquence as to 
utterly deceive the " mother of all living." Now if this 
serpent is the same as Satan, or Devil, only under another 
name, and the testimony of Jesus can be relied on as ex- 
pressed in John 8 and 44, then the serpent is a foul mur- 
derer, an unqualified liar, and his own originator, yet in the 
record before us, the Lord God is charged with being the 
father of this horrible thing. Who tells the Truth, the 
writer of the record, or Jesus of Nazareth? Surely there 
is a mistake somewhere. For our own part we must 
accept the testimony of Jesus, not simply because it is his, 
but it carries to our spiritual perception the conviction of 
its Truth. 

It is impossible for us to conceive the author of all 
things, whom we can not but recognize as absolutely good, 
to be the producer of a liar and murderer. We are glad 
to see, however, that this monstrous lie is not predicated 
of GW, but of the Lord God, who he is, we do not know, 
and do not care to know, if he manufactures serpents who 
lie about " our Father" the Good. It is enough for us to 
know, that God, being absolute Truth can not by any pos- 
sibility become the originator of a lie. Further, this ser- 
pent charges God, by insinuation, with being arbitrary, 
vindictive, incapable or cruel. 

Arbitrary in laying upon Adam and Eve a restriction 
by which they are deprived of the fruit of a tree, which 



OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 63 

according to the testimony of the serpent is capable of giv- 
ing them more knowledge and happiness than all else; 
vindictive, in threatening them with an awful punishment 
if they gratify an innate desire to partake of the forbidden 
fruit, and either incapable of conferring upon them the 
highest possible good, or cruel in withholding from them 
that knowledge which the serpent says will exalt them to 
the condition of Gods. In this latter charge is involved 
another lie, and that is, that God himself knows evil, and 
that it is an advantage for any one else to know it, and the 
forbidden tree (matter) is invested by the serpent with an 
intelligence and power, to open their blind eyes, thus im- 
plying that God had been the Father of blind children, 
and the serpent would improve upon God's work, by 
directing them to a tree, the fruit of which would not only 
give them sight, but wonderfully improve their condition 
in every respect. Here is the hydra-headed lie, which for 
ages has been handed down to us as the Truth, and the 
carnal man has believed it, with its results of sin, sickness 
and death. 

This error, or misrepresentation of God and man, 
went on through the ages ^for man was held to be a com- 
pound of mind and matter, and matter was believed to be 
a reality with intelligence and power of causation) with 
every now and then, some one rebuking the error by his 
spiritual apprehension of the Truth, that God was Spirit, 
one, an absolute unit, incapable of division, and that man, 
his offspring, must be spiritual, till Jesus came, who by rea- 
son of His superior spiritual perception, unmasked the lie. 
exposed the falsity, and showed by word and deed that the 
real, and only man there is, was not a compound of mind 
and matter, controlled by its supposed laws, a sinful, sick- 
ening, dying creature; but that man was the image and 



64 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

likeness of Spirit, God, Good ; consequently sinless, whole, 
healthy, harmonious, incapable of discord, decay or death, 
and manifesting in all things the mind of the all-knowing, 
all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving and eternal God. 

All who accepted His teaching as the Truth, proved 
the same as He did, by their victory over sin and sickness, 
and in proportion to their understanding even over death. 
If no other passage of scripture existed but John 3rd and 
16 " For God so loved the world, that He gave His only 
begotten son, that whosoever believeth on Him, may not 
perish, but have everlasting life," to prove that God is 
already reconciled to man, and needs no suffering, death, 
or pleading of His son to be favorable to the human race, 
that of itself is quite sufficient. But we pass on to notice 
the next proposition, — viz : 

" Christ ( fesus} did not die as our substitute, but as 
our companion and associate / not instead of man, but with 
him and for him" 

This affirms, that the work of Jesus Christ, whatever 
that work may be, is not a work of substitution, that is, a 
something done by Him to excuse us from doing it, but a 
work done by Him, for the purpose of showing us how to 
do it, that by doing as He did, we may be able to extricate 
ourselves from the dominion of sin, sickness and death. 
In order to show us how to overcome the claims of our 
personality, it became necessary for Him to take upon Him- 
self our nature, that is, for the true selfhood of Jesus, who 
apprehended the Christ or Divine principle of Life, Truth 
and Love, to assume in belief, pro tern (for in the realm of 
spirit, there never was a personal or material Jesus) 
through the conception of Mary a material form, or per- 
sonality, in which He did just as we do, being subject to all 
that we are subject to, yet without sin, and by means of 



OF THE A TOXEMENT. 65 

that personality showing us the real from the unreal, the 
true from the false ; exposing thereby the utter fallacy of 
those beliefs concerning matter, its supposed laws and 
power of control. It was as if He said to the natural man, 
u You think that sin, sickness and death are from God, 
that it is a necessity of your being, that you must patiently 
submit to its supposed laws, until eventually you are over- 
come by death, and return to the earth from whence you 
were taken. 

That is not so, you are not material beings, you are 
not a product of dust or matter, you are entirely spiritual, 
the offspring of God, He is your Father, " in Him you 
live, by Him you are moved and through Him you have 
your being." This personality is not yon, if you would 
enter into life, that is, attain the consciousness of your 
being, and come after me, you must deny yourself, and all 
the claims of the five personal senses." This Jesus proved 
to be the Truth by healing the sick and raising the dead. 

Furthermore, it was as if He said, " you hold the be- 
lief that this material world with its atmosphere, moun- 
tains, valleys, plains, seas, lakes, rivers, the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms are realities, with laws supposed to be 
the expressions of God's will, that they are immutable, that 
you are subject to them, that they possess a power to 
which you must submit, that, in short, matter with all its 
supposed forces are your masters, that they have power to 
control you. You think that matter, in the shape of food 
sustains life, that man can not live without food, that your 
life is at the mercy of accident, disease, the malice of 
others, that storms and material force can destroy you. 
That there is a malicious principle of evil constantly seek- 
ing to hurt you." This is not true. 

He showed in His dav and generation, that all these 



66 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

beliefs of human kind had no basis in Truth, that not one 
of them expressed an Ego or principle, for there was not 
one which He did not destroy. Even the most powerful 
of all these beliefs, the law of death, he completely disan- 
nulled. This was His atoning work, done for us, but not 
instead of our doing it. He said " the works that I do, 
shall ye do also." It is readily admitted that Jesus did 
these works by His knowledge of God, the omnipotence of 
Truth, the power of the Spirit. By the same knowledge 
and Truth which He taught and demonstrated, each one 
for himself must do the like things, and by doing them, 
we too, shall put out our personality and its claims, and 
there will stand revealed in due time the other, (for Jesus 
was only the first born among many brethren) mani- 
fested sons of God, spiritual and not material. 

While writing, the following illustration comes to me, 
which of course you will not make to run on all fours, that 
is, apply in every detail, but simply use as a guide to the 
Truth we are all desirous to reach. Your child is playing 
with other children, when a thoughtless boy, for the sake 
he says, of fun, rushes in among them with a horrible 
mask upon his face, and other things upon his person 
which effectually conceal him, throws up his arms, and 
goes through other threatening gestures till your little one 
is almost terrified to death. The cry for help soon brings 
you to the spot, the situation is perceived in a moment, 
you do not stop to punish the neighbor's boy for his reck- 
less folly, but picking up your little one, you take it home, 
whisper words of comfort, tell it not to be afraid, for there 
is nothing to hurt it. Your words of comfort seem to 
have but little effect, the sobs and terrified look, still show 
the power of fear, and all your words of explanation and 
assurances of there being nothing to fear are apparently 



OF THE A TOXEMENT. 67 

lost. At length a novel idea strikes you, you go out, and 
get from the neighbor the mask used by the boy, and with 
this you go to your child, show him what it is, you let him 
handle it, you then put it on in his presence, and let him 
take it off, and put it on his own face, you put it on again, 
with other things, and try to imitate the boy who caused 
the fear; at length your work is successful, the smile comes 
back to your child, the terrified look takes its departure, 
and though the physical shock to the child may not imme- 
diately disappear, you know the danger is past for the fear 
is killed. 

We will leave you to apply the illustration in full, but 
would just suggest a thought or two. Personality is the mask, 
its beliefs are the manipulations of sense, which keeps per- 
sonalities in constant fear in which fear all the disease that 
are incident to the flesh grow and flourish, for without fear 
disease could not live. The blessed Jesus takes that mask of 
personality, with all its terrifying beliefs, puts it on, and 
takes it off at pleasure, shows it, with all its possible states 
and conditions to be nothing, that is, in the sense of its 
having a principle or Truth to support it, and thus, by 
destroying its claims to be a reality, He becomes the Savior 
of the world, (as the mother became the savior of her 
child) and " delivers those who through fear of death 
were all their life time subject to bondage." 



68 A CHRIS TIA AT SCIENCE EXPOSITION 



EIGHTH LECTURE. 

The next proposition of our friend which we regard 
as in accord with the teachings of Christian Science is: 

" Christ did not die to save us from the penalty of sin, 
but from sin itself" 

This affirmation comes to us as truth; at least, if it is 
not, something within tells us that it ought to be true, for 
if a person sins, and that willfully, they ought to suffer, and 
any one who would deliver them from the suffering of 
sin, and not from the sin itself, would be giving a license 
to sin, and doing the sinner an actual injustice. Scripture 
declares, "The soul that sinneth it shall die." (Ezek. 18 
and 20.) This word soul cannot refer to that "life" which 
John says was "the light of men, that lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world," which must be the real man, 
the son of God "who was born not of blood, nor by the will 
of the flesh, nor by the will of man, but of God." For 
we cannot conceive of the infinitely wise and holy God, 
giving expression to an idea, called "His son," because 
begotten of Him, and investing that son with a capacity 
to commit sin, and die as a consequence. 

The only just interpretation then, which we can put 
upon the passage is: "The carnal, or material man that 
sins, shall die." If he, the error, the false man, sets him- 
self up against the Truth, and claims to be the real spirit- 
ual man, he shall die; the error shall be put out, and if 
the carnal or mortal man, the personality will not allow 
itself to be denied and put out by the Truth, the suffering 
which its own resistance to the Truth, will be sure to 
bring on, shall ultimately extinguish, utterly annihilate 
everything that appertains in belief to the personal or 



OF THE A TONEMEKT. 6g 

mortal man. The passage in Ezekiel is simply another 
form of the one in Genesis, "In the day thou eatest there- 
of, thou shalt surely die." That is, the moment mortal man 
sets himself up as being the real man, possessing Life, Sub- 
stance and Intelligence, that moment he shall die, — he will 
at once lose the knowledge of God who only is Life, 
Substance and Intelligence, and the loss of that knowledge 
is death, and the gain of it is life, as the blessed Jesus said, 
"This is Life eternal, that they might know thee, and 
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." 

To bring this knowledge to man was the atoning work 
of Jesus, when it comes to us, the false beliefs of mortal 
man are dissipated, and we find ourselves, "at-one-ment" 
with God our Father and mother, no longer afar off, but 
made nigh by the blood of Christ, which is the life and 
power of Truth. It will, we think, be clearly seen then 
that the atoning work of "Jesus the Christ" was never 
intended to lessen for one moment the suffering which is 
inherent in the violation of law, if it did that, the belief 
of pleasure in sin would be perpetuated, and instead of 
man being brought to a speedy knowledge of God by the 
atonement, it would only keep him that much the longer 
from his father. The atonement of "Jesus the Christ" is 
more a w r ork of preventing the suffering by a saving from 
the sin, which if indulged in is sure to bring it, hence, it 
verifies the old saying, that, "prevention is better than 
cure. 

The next proposition is: 

" Christ did not die, that we might not die, but 
deliver us out of a death in which we were already 
involved, " 

Such is the condition of the world, or mortal man at 
the present time. He thinks he is alive and active, but in 



7 o A CHRISTIAN' SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

reality the mortal man is dead while he thinks he lives. 
Jesus emphatically affirms this Truth, when he called upon 
a certain man to follow Him. The man was not ready, or 
just then willing to obey the command,but excused himself by 
saying "Suffer me first to go and bury my father." Jesus 
says, "Let the dead bury their dead, come thou and follow 
me." It is evident from this, that Jesus considered those that 
knew not God as dead. Paul expresses the same idea in 
his letter to the Ephesians 2, 1-10. The whole is so 
beautiful and explanatory of the point under consideration 
that we give you the quotation in full : 

"And He hath quickened you that were dead, in 
trespasses and sin, wherein ye formerly walked, according 
to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the 
power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the sons 
of disobedience ; among them also we all formerly had 
our conversation, in the desires of the flesh, doing the will 
of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of 
wrath, even as the others. But God, being rich in mercy, 
through his great love, wherewith he loved us, hath 
quickened even us together with Christ, who were dead 
in trespasses; (by grace are ye saved;) and hath raised 
us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places 
through Christ Jesus; that he might show in the ages to 
come the exceeding riches of his grace, in his kindness 
toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace ye are 
saved through faith ; and this is not of yourselves, it is the 
gift of God; not by works, lest any one should boast. 
For we are his workmanship, created through Christ 
Jesus unto good works, which God before had prepared, 
that we might walk in them." 

There is another passage in this same letter (Chap. 5 
and 14. ) which we must not overlook, " Awake thou that 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 7 r 

sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give 
thee light. " 

From these, and many other portions of scripture 
that might be quoted, it will be seen, that death according 
to Bible teachings, (which is proved by human experience) 
is not the cessation, of physical activities, ceasing to breathe, 
but a state of mental sleep, unconsciousness, or more pro- 
perly speaking ignorance of God, mental darkness, no 
perception that w r e are spiritual and not material. That is 
the scriptural idea of death, out of which we have to be 
awakened, and out of which many are awake, and in turn, 
they are following the example of Jesus, Paul and others, 
and crying, "Awake thou that sleepest, arise from the 
dead and Christ shall give thee light." 

Another proposition: 

" The sinner is not redee?ned because he repents, but 
he is called upon to repent because he has been redeemed" 

There is more Truth logically deducible from this 
proposition, than perhaps our brother .would admit. In 
Christian Science, however, w r e accept it as Truth with all 
its logical deductions, because it is self evident or prova- 
ble. It affirms that the salvation of man, (that is, the 
mortal man,) is already complete, and nothing which he 
can do can make it more so. He may shed an abundance 
of tears, and be subject to pangs of inexpressible sorrow, 
he may mortify the body by much fasting, pray many 
prayers, and give all his possessions to feed the poor, but 
he cannot change the purpose of God, or make Him one 
particle more loving to us than He is already, for He is 
love, and that loving nature can never change. But as the 
doctrine of repentance is so intimately connected with that 
of the atonement it may be necessary for us to look a lit- 
tle more minutely into it. 



j 2 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

Repentance is not a first cause, but is itself an effect 
of an antecedent cause which is a spiritual perception and 
conviction of the Truth. This conviction is produced by 
the spirit of Truth, who reveals to, or pours upon the 
human mind the light that reveals its false beliefs, shows 
the error and inspires the disposition to put them all away. 
Jesus said of this spirit of Truth, " And he coming will 
convince the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of 
•judgment." 

When that conviction takes place, then comes pangs 
of sorrow for having ever sinned, but this sorrow is not 
repentance, until the sin, error, is given up, entirely put 
out, then comes the consciousness of salvation, which is 
nothing more, than the removal of these beliefs, which, 
up to that time, had veiled the smiling face of our Father 
God, and kept back the consciousness of our being His 
child, spiritual and not material. It will be seen, that 
repentance does not change God, or remove any difficulty 
on his part, but it does remove our difficulty by rending 
the veil, breaking down the middle wall of partition 
between us, which is sin, and then we step into the holy 
of Holies, and the very audience chamber of Deity, where 
we become conscious of our at-one-ment with Him, and 
the out-flowings of His love, by which we are constrained 
to sing with John Wesley, when he passed the rent veil: 

" O that the world would taste and see, 
The riches of His grace ; 
The arms of love that compass me, 
Would all mankind embrace. " 

Another proposition of our friend is : 
" The atonement is not the cause of GooTs love to man 
but the effect or flowing out of that loveP 

This statement is in harmony with Christian Science, 



OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 7 j 

as we shall now try to show. In the record which John 
gives us of the midnight interview of Nicodemus with 
Jesus, he represents the Teacher as saving to his visitor, 
k *As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so/////.s7 
the son of man be lifted up." This must implies a clear 
necessitv, which almost involuntarily suggests the ques- 
tion "Why must Jesus die? What necessitv can possibly 
exist for a sacrifice so great? Does it arise from the 
unrelenting Tustice of God ? Must that be satisfied before 
God can pardon sin ?" If it is meant by the "satisfaction 
of justice," that the vicarious suffering of another, and his 
perfect conformitv thereto, then we must demur, for we 
hold it impossible for another, who lives in perfect har- 
mony with, and meeting every requirement of the eternal 
law of right to suffer for my violation of that law, and 
equally impossible for him to perform the least work of 
supererogation that could be placed to my account, as 
every individual is under momentary obligation to love 
God with all his heart and his neighbor as his himself, and 
more than that Jesus of Xazareth could not do. Justice, 
which is nothing more nor less than right, demands that / 
shall be right and do right, the being right and doing 
right of another can never be transferred to me. So we 
see that justice, is the very being of God, he cannot relent, 
or give up its claim for right a single moment. The 
necessity, therefore, for what is called the " sacrifice of 
Christ " could not originate from that source. 

Again, on this line: Does the necessitv for the so- 
called death of Christ exist in the supposed fact that, 
God saw the sin, awful suffering, and consequent death of 
the human race, and that man's utter helplessness excited 
His compassion, and moved him to devise a way for man's 



74 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

escape, by means of the incarnation, sufferings and death 
of His well-beloved son? 

This we know has been the teaching of the so-called 
orthodox church, and presents to the Christian Scientist 
a question of great importance which must not be treated 
with indifference or brushed away by the saying that 
" vicarious atonement is a relic of barbarism." We pro- 
pose to examine it carefully, and if w r e find it to contain a 
basis of truth, we shall certainly accept it, even if it should 
demolish our new position, but let us see. Our first dif- 
ficulty in accepting this theory of the church is: 

That it is contrary to the direct teachings of Jesus. 
His w r ords do not allow the least inference, that the 
demands of justice, or the terrible sin and consequent 
suffering of the human race was the exciting, or moving 
cause of man's redemption. He attributes what we call 
"the atoning work of Christ" to a natural manifestation 
of the love of God. An exhibition of that which is inher- 
ent in the very nature of love, a something which love 
could not help doing, any more than the sun can help 
putting out the darkness, or water can prevent itself from 
finding its own level. It is in its very nature so to do and 
cannot do otherwise. So it is with the love of God, it 
flows out, expresses itself, it has no dams to keep it back, 
which are opened or closed by objects or considerations 
external to itself. Such, however, is the characteristic of 
human love, and man thinks that God's love is like his, 
but hear what Jesus says, " For God so loved the world, 
that He gave his only begotten son, that whosoever be- 
lieveth on Him, may not perish, but have everlasting life." 
You may examine these words as closely as you please, 
and it will puzzle you to find the least reference to substi- 
tution, or vicarious sacrifice. The salvation of man, then. 



OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 7S 

according to this statemeut of Jesus, is made to hinge on 
two things: 

(1) The giving of God's only begotten son. Can 
that "giving" mean more than this, than that Jesus of 
Nazareth, that is, the real or individual Jesus, the being 
that existed independent of the body ; or personal Jesus r 
which Mary by spiritual apprehension (because of the 
Ho!v Ghost coming upon her,) perceived, conceived, and 
materialized through her body, as the ideal man, that is 
God's idea of man, spiritual, and not material. Inasmuch 
as that ideal man, personated in the form of Jesus, was, 
"not born of blood, nor by the will of the flesh, nor by the 
will of man, but of God." He was the only begotten or 
manifested son of God, because up to that time He was the 
only man born into this world whose production was not 
according to the natural process of generation. Hence He 
is very properly called the only begotten son of God, and 
also the first born among many brethren, which indicates, 
that other sons of God are to be manifested in like manner, 
and scripture further intimates that when they are mani- 
fested, the whole creation, which is now subject to vanity, 
and waiting for the revelation of the sons of God, shall 
be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the 
glorious liberty of the children of God. See Rom. 8, 19- 
25. 

That %i only begotten son of God," which we identify 
with Jesus of Nazareth, is called by Jesus Himself in 
accommodation to human understanding, the r< gift of 
God," because by it God's idea of man is made known. 
Just as a gift from a friend reveals his mind to us, so Jesus 
makes known the love of our Father and mother God. 
From this, we think it will be seen, that man's salvation 
from sin, sickness and death is secured, not bv a belief 



76 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

in certain theological dogmas, but a belief on the Lord 
Jesus Christ, "that whosoever believeth on Him, may not 
perish, but have everlasting life." This belief, which 
brings the consciousness of salvation, certainly cannot 
mean a mere intellectual assent, or credit which we give 
to an historical record concerning a man, called Jesus, who 
is reported to have lived, said and done many wonderful 
things, in the land of Palestine, about two thousand years 
ago. It must mean more than that, nothing less than a 
spiritual apprehension, like that which Peter expressed, 
when asked what he thought of Jesus, "Thou art the 
Christ Ihe son of the living God." 

Whosoever believes on Him that is, clearly perceives 
the Divine Principle of Life, Truth and Love, as expressed 
and made manifest by fesus in so many ways during His 
life and ministry, such an one shall not perish, but he 
shall have everlasting life, for through this Jesus he gets 
to know that God is Life, and that he (the believer) 
lives, moves, and has his being in God, therefore he can- 
not die, because he is spiritual and not material. This 
seems to be the way of salvation as taught by Jesus, 
whose teachings we feel constrained to accept before any 
other, because they are not only reasonable, but they meet 
and satisfy the deepest wants of our being. 

Furthermore, if it be true that God sees and knows 
this sinning, sickening and dying man, then it must follow 
(a) that He has always known him or He is not the om- 
niscient God we take Him to be. For God to see or 
know a thing is to be conscious that that thing is, that 
it has a real being, and if He is the only, and all 
being, then whatever being there is, it must be in Him, or 
He is not "all in all." Now if God is the source and sus- 
tainer of all being and this sinning man derives his being 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 77 

and sustenance from God, and God knows all about him, 
then it must follow that such a man is an eternal being, 
for if such a man should go out of being, then God would 
lose a part of his conscious being, and that moment he 
would become less than w r hatweknow by our spiritual per- 
ception he must be, viz., an absolutely perfect being from 
which nothing can be taken or added to. Therefore we 
are constrained to conclude, that the old belief as expressed 
in the following popular hymn is not true: 

" Plunged in a gulf of dark despair, 
We wretched sinners lav, 
Without one cheerful beam of hope, 
Or spark of glimmering day. 

With pitying eyes the Prince of peace, 

Beheld our helpless grief; 
He saw, and — oh, amazing love! 

He ran to our relief." 

God seeing sin and misery, and saving us therefrom, 
is the human sense interpretation put upon our spiritual 
perception of the Truth, by which the beliefs of the per- 
sonal man, as expressed in sin and sickness, are utterly 
destroyed. 



7<? A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 



NINTH LECTURE. 

The last of the twelve propositions of our friend 
is as follows: 

" Thejinal outcome of the atoning scheme is not a 
partial success, but a perfect, absolute and universal 
triumph" 

Christian Science confirms this statement, and in that 
it differs widely from the so-called teaching of orthodoxy, 
which recognizes sin, not simply as a belief of mortal man, 
but an entity, a reality which is to be, and will be ever- 
lastingly punished in hell. We know that within the last 
few years, many of our leading ministers, say but little about 
this fundamental doctrine of the churches, for in the light 
of modern Science, yea of common sense, the doctrine as 
set forth in the " Westminster Confession of Faith" is so 
hideous, and repulsive to the feelings of human nature, 
that even the defenders of that " Confession," are waking 
up to see the necessity of, and are asking for a review, that 
the objectionable dogma may be expunged and not before 
time, for if there is one thing in the whole system of the- 
ology which has produced a sense of alienation from God, 
fear, sickness and premature death, it is the doctrine of 
"Endless Punishment . " 

The position Christian Science takes is: 

(a) That sin is not a reality. It has no inherent 
quality of perpetuity, its very nature is suicidal. God 
never made it, He does not support it, and he has no govern- 
mental arrangement for its continuance. Yea, He does 
not even know that there is a belief of sin, if He did, He 
must always have known it, and would continue to know 
it through all eternity, for He is immutable, hence can 



OF THE A TOXEMENT. yg 

never lose the knowledge that He has now. The prophet 
Habakkuk was right when he said, " Thou art of purer 
eves than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity/' 
land 13. 

Sin then is simply a belief of mortal man, his wrong 
thought, an error, a seeming to be, a claim of reality, with 
no fact, Ego, Principle or Truth as its basis of support. 
It is a mere illusion — a " will-o-wisp, " a promise of some- 
thing, without a promiser, an appearance to material sense, 
which says, " lam something," but when caught, or rather 
indulged in, is like the floating soap bubble, catching by 
its brilliancy the eye of the child, who pursues it under the 
impression that it is a beautiful thing, that the possession 
of it will give him pleasure, so he runs after it, and finally 
grasps it, when to his great disappointment, it is not even 
as much as a butterfly, it is simply nothing ; so is sin. It 
seems to be a something, and promises much, but who, 
that has pursued the phantom does not know that it is an 
illusion, a cheat, a lie, and does God know anything of a 
lie? Is there anything to a lie? Has God excavated, in 
his vast domains, somewhere, an immense pit, and started a 
fire of sulphur to consume a lie, a nothing? What is 
there to burn or consume? O what nonsense we have 
believed! Surely we have been dreaming, under the 
influence of a horrible nightmare, which human folly has 
invested with a reality. Well may the seraphic Paul cry 
out to the dreamers: 

Azvake thou that sleepest^and arise from the dead, and 
Christ shall give thee light. 

(b) We affirm in Science, that the only man there 
is, is not a sinner, who needs to be saved, because he 
is spiritual, not material, for he is made in the image and 
likenesss of his Father, and Jesus told the woman at the 



So A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

well of Samaria that " God is spirit. " Science says, if 
God is spirit, man the expression of Spirit, must be spiri- 
ual, and can never be anything else, for man can no more 
change his nature than God can change His. 

It is written "I am the Lord, I change not." So man 
can say, "I am spiritual, the offspring of immutable Spirit, 
therefore I cannot change." This being the Truth, it will 
be seen, the only man, there is, is not a sinner, hence he 
can never be lost. Just think of it, if you can, a lost child 
of God. Preposterous ! Is it true, that we live, move 
and have our being in God? and is God as Augustine used 
to say, of the nature of God, "that it was a circle, whose 
center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere," 
how then is it possible for a child of God to be lost when 
he cannot get away from the presence of his Father, and 
if alw r ays in the presence of his Father, he can never go to 
hell, or the sweet singer of Israel did not tell the Truth when 
he said, " In thy presence is fulness of joy and at thy right 
hand there are pleasures forevermore." Psalm 16 and 11. 
Right here, you will doubtles meet us with the question, 
"What about this personal or mortal man? Is he nothing?" 
Simply nothing, so say the scriptures. They inform us 
that he had his origin in dust, which signifies nothing, and 
whatever that dust in a supposed state of organization 
may claim to be, the same scriptures affirm of the personal 
man, " Dust, (nothing) thou art, and unto dust (nothing) 
shalt thou return. " Hear, w r hat the prophet Isaiah says 
about this mortal man. "The voice said, cry. And he 
said, w^hat shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and the good- 
liness thereof is as the flower of the field, the grass wither- 
eth the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord 
bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. " The 
apostle James in speaking of this mortal or personal man, 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 8r 

whose claims are so pretentious, says, a For what is your 
life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, 
and then vanisheth away." We need no confirmation of 
this truth, other, than the graveyard, to which this mortal 
man is being rapidly and irresistibly pushed by his own 
beliefs. 

How then can this man be a child of God, an offspring 
of omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent Spirit? It can- 
not be. From this it will be seen, that in Christian Sci- 
ence we make an important and necessary distinction 
between the true and false man. We affirm, that the- 
ology has greatly erred in giving to this dust or false man 
a reality, by confounding him with the spiritual or real, 
or so identifying him with the real man as to make the 
spiritual and material man one and the same. By the 
light of Christian Science we are led to see that spirit and 
matter cannot mix, any more than light and darkness, or 
Truth and error. Error may seem to clothe itself in the 
beautiful garments of Truth, but it can never become 
Truth or identical w T ith Truth, neither can Truth clothe 
itself with error, and thus appear to be, what by its very na- 
ture it cannot be, and yet in theology we have been taught, 
that the spiritual man is clothed with the material man,, 
that the outer is essential to the inner, and that without 
the outer or fleshly man, the real spiritual man could 
never make himself known. As well might you say, that 
error is essential for the expression of Truth, that the in- 
visible and immortal man finds it is necessary to formulate 
a mortal man, to give expression to immortal thoughts. 
It cannot be. It is impossible for a unit to express itself 
by or through a cipher. As long as God is one, an 
absolute Unit, incapable of division, He cannot make His 
nature known by that man which is a sinner, gets sick and 



82 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

dies, neither can he identify himself with such a false 
representation of himself, any more than an honest man 
can fraternize with a man whom he knows to be a thief. 
Vice and virtue will not mix, no more can the real spiritual 
man mix with the unreal and material. Species never 
change in what is called the material world, the fish never 
becomes a bird, nor the bird a fish. Neither can gold 
become silver, there is no power that can change the one 
to the other. Jesus said, "that which is born of the flesh 
is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit. " " A 
good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit, neither can a 
corrupt tree bring forth good fruft, either make the tree 
good and its fruit good, or make the tree corrupt and its 
fruit corrupt," which is equivalent to saying, the quality 
of one, cannot by any possibility produce or be transformed 
to the quality of the other. 

In Christian Science we do not deny the doctrine of 
the atonement, we simply, w^hile in the light of Truth, 
find ourselves unable to accept that interpretation which 
is put upon it, by what is called orthodox theology. To 
us, the work of the atonement is the spiritual perception 
and understanding of the Truth, taught and demonstrated 
by Jesus the Christ, by which the beliefs of the carnal 
man, concerning sin, sickness and death are completely 
destroyed, and upon their destruction we wake up, or 
attain to the consciousness of our being at-one-ment with 
God, spiritual and not material, that " I and the Father 
are one, " and until that does take place, we shall be 
obliged to Tceep company with David, who said, "I shall 
be satisfied when I awaken in thy likeness, and never till 
then. " 

In conclusion, Christian Science endorses the belief 
of our brother to the full, viz., that the final outcome of 



OF THE A TOXEME. 

the atoning scheme as it is called by theology, will not be 
.//but a complete - n of Adam, 

claiming to be a son of God, will bv the atoning work of 
Jesus Christ, be made to disappear before the manifested 
S d of God, who is not a material being, subject to sin, 
sickness and death, but a spiritual being, expressing the 
image and likeness of his Father from all eternity; a being 
who never for one moment of his existence had a - 
sin, sickness, or death, for his life has been hid with Christ 
in God, it has never been out of God, and never can be, 
for there is but one Mind and power, and that is 
whose nature is love which renders it impossible for Him 
to cast off one of His children, but the counterfeits, the 
personalities, which have claimed to be His children, but 
who have never borne the likeness of God and never can, 
although they have called God Father, they shall be 
utterly destroyed by the appearing of the Christ , 
thev are of their father the devil (evil . Concerning 
whom J suss t€ Hc was a murderer from the begin- 

ning, and abode not in the Truth ; for there is no truth 
in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own ; 
for he is a liar, and the father of ::." When, by follow- 
ing the teachings, example and demonstrations of Jes 
ch one for himself shall have destroyed the beliefs 
personal sense, there will cometoeach, the full conscious: 
. which Jesus himself had, when he 

at will be the completion of the atonement, 

i such a glorious ultimate must be reached, for the 

mouth of the Lord, — the word of Truth hath declared ::. 

There is no Intelligence, or Power his 

hand, or say unto Him, What doest th 

In conclusion we will cite for the encouragement of 
the timid and fearful, a few prophetic utterances, which 



84 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

must be fulfilled, that is realized, because the thing pre- 
dicted already exists in the realm of reality, and it only 
waits the waking up of the sleeper to the consciousness 
that the good he dreams of as being afar off is nigh him, 
even in his mouth and in his heart. I may illustrate it, by 
what a brother said to me and some others a short time 
since, "I will tell you," He said, "how this life of sense 
appears to me. It is as if my son had fallen asleep in my 
arms, and in the sleep he dreams of being away from me 
and home, he is destitute and sick, having a terrible exper- 
ience, all of which seems real to him, and as though it 
would never come to an end. By and by, however, he 
wakes up and finds to his surprise and delight that he is 
folded in my arms, encompassed by my love, that he is 
still at home, that he has never been away, the horrible 
experience, which seemed to him so real, he never had, it 
was the dream's experience, not his, there was no reality to it, 
for it all vanished when he woke up." This beautiful 
illustration carries its own application, we must now cite the 
passages. 

"As in Adam all die, even so through Christ shall all 
be made alive." 1st of Cor. 15, 22. 

"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw 
all men unto me." John 12 and 32. "And so all Israel 
shall be saved, as it is written, the deliverer shall come out 
of Zion, and shall turn away iniquity from Jacob." Rom. 
11 and 26. "For God hath not appointed us to wrath, 
but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ." 1st 
of Thess. 5 and 9. 

Who can think for one moment, that God's appoint* 
ment will not stand ? It must stand, his purpose will be 
accomplished. The Good Shepherd will continue to seek 
His sheep until all are folded, not a lamb will be left to 



OF THE A TONEMENT. 85 

wander or perish on the dark mountain of ignorance and 
sin. The spiritual apprehension of Isaiah saw what 
actually existed in the realm of spirit, and that apprehen- 
sion he expressed in human language and figures of speech 
that mortals might get a glimmer of that kingdom of the 
Christ which was never to have an end, and could not, 
simply because it had no beginning. Read what he says, 
in chapter 11 to verse 9 

"And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of 
Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: 

"And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the 
spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel 
and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the 
Lord: 

"And shall make him of quick understanding in the 
fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of 
his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears. 

"But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and 
reprove with equity for the meek of the earth : and he 
shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with 
the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 

"And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, 
and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the 
leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and the 
young lion and the fatling together; and a little child 
shall lead them. 

"And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones 
shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like 
the ox. 

"And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the 
asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cock- 
atrice's den. 



£6 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION 

"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy 
mountain : for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of 
the Lord) as the waters cover the sea. " 

That knowledge (the blessed Jesus said) shall make 
you free. "Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth 
shall make you free." If it don't mean free from sin, 
sickness and death, then what does it mean? 




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